C&B Presents: The Felice Brothers
I’m from New York originally. Not the City. The State. I don’t live there anymore, but I grew up near the Catskill Mountains, which are a sort of junior varsity Adirondacks. Very bucolic and of human scale, but rarely what you’d call majestic. Anyway, when I was younger I wanted nothing to do with the place. Boring. Conservative. Cold as the grave in winter. Profoundly Caucasian. Now I’m thinking I might want to move back there someday.
The Felice Brothers come from the same place, more or less. Three of them are in fact brothers surnamed Felice (Ian, Simone, and James), and they make glorious clattering music, bathe rarely, drink freely and by all accounts vomit copiously. The bass player’s name is Christmas, like that badass from Faulkner’s Light in August. They’re Italian kids from Palenville, New York, population approximately 1100, nestled in the Catskill foothills, 20 miles or so from Woodstock. But they made their name and honed their skills 100 miles to the south, busking on the New York City subway and cruising from gig to gig in their “short bus.”
When I listen to them, I am Home, whether I like it or not. Sometimes I am swimming in a deep cold lake or driving at night on one of the pitch-dark backroads of Upstate New York. All peaceful. But then I blink and I can see the greasy-haired kids growing up in post-industrial towns, dirtbags with skinny arms protruding from sleeveless Iron Maiden tee-shirts, spray-painting Jim Morrison’s “poetry” on the walls of the National Guard Armory and drinking cheap whiskey mixed with Mountain Dew out of two-litre bottles.
People seem to compare The Felice Brothers to Dylan and The Band, and there’s certainly something to that. Ian and Simone Felice sing with an honesty and fragility (and humor) that I can hear in Dylan and Danko and Helm, while the playing has a loose, ramshackle quality that wouldn’t sound out of place on The Basement Tapes. I also hear echoes of Grant Lee Phillips at his very best, especially on “Murder by Mistletoe.” Can you tell that I like this? Actually, I fucking love it. And I’m going to see them play on April 10. I’m giddy. They have a new, eponymous record out on Team Love Records and it’s just tremendous. Buy it or I’ll sue you.
The Felice Brothers – Frankie’s Gun
The Felice Brothers – Murder by Mistletoe
My favorite album of the year so far.
Actually this is one of my favourites of C&B’s choices – I was surprised it seems to have garnered the least attention. Good for you, muruch!
These guys have a Daytrotter session planned for recording today – expect it in the next month or so as they have a whole host of excllent bands passing through their studios this week, so the posting queue will take some time to reduce. Should be worth a punt on the basis of the above tracks.