The Felice Brothers have to rank right up there with all-time camera-shy bands. On their second Team Love release, Yonder Is The Clock, there are no photos and scant information about the band, similar to their eponymous first record for the label.
There is no lack of creative, roots-imbued songs with thought-provoking lyrics though. Channeling Americana as direct descendants of The Band, at its most sparse, and vocally reminiscent of Bob Dylan, the group from the Catskills of three brothers and two friends runs through 13 songs that at times hearken back to what sounds like music that may have been around during the time of the Civil War.
With a core of guitar, accordion, fiddle, piano, drums and bass, augmented on occasion with several horns, they give their music and influences a fresh take, putting a personal stamp of a country-based style. And much like The Band the songs come first in all of the Felice Brothers arrangements.
Lyrically this album is obsessed with death. Perhaps that’s a bit too strong. But all the songs are about death, albeit some with an unnerving sense of humor. If you read the lyrics out loud it’s hard not to start laughing.
From the opener The Big Surprise:
Grab your shovel, let’s get to it
There’s no one way how to do it
And there will be no woes or sad goodbyes
On the day of the big surprise
Or Penn Station:
And I know on track number seven
There is a train that goes to take me to Heaven
But a faster train is coming near
That the devil engineers
The references just keep coming. Buried In Ice tells of a dream of cryogenics gone bad; Down I go, Down to meet tham all in Sailor Song; Breathe chicken breathe, Don’t you lose your breath, Chickens don’t get no life after death from Run Chicken Run; and the one non-original, the traditional Memphis Flu with its 1929 pretty women, men are dying, Call the nurse, Call the doctor, Call the priest.
Still, there is no sense of morbidity as each song sort of winks at the listener simply laying out what everyone knows is the inevitable. The album appropriately closes on yet another mortality note but with a sense of hope in Rise And Shine.
Ian Felice, who plays guitar and piano, provides most of the lead vocals in a laconic, country-infused approach that makes him sound much older than his years. James Felice also sings and takes on accordion, organ and piano duties while brother Simone is the drummer. Greg Farley, the most recent addition, plays fiddle and washboard and Christmas Clapton is the bass player.
The moderate tempo tunes and ballads are all played with a delicate and precise sense of tradition and inventiveness, while the uptempo numbers are at times chaotic and raucous almost sounding like Dixieland jazz.
The Big Surprise works nicely blending finger-picking guitar and piano over a heartbeat drum feel and Farley’s fiddle gliding over the middle section. Penn Station rocks along propelled by a walking bass and Ian’s gritty vocal with occasional flights of falsetto, eventually opening up to ambient crowd noises against Farley’s fiddle.
The uptempo country shuffle of Chicken Wire, dominated by James’ organ, shows how loose the band can sound with its stop-and-go verses while still keeping everything under control. And the similar feel but tighter sounding Run Chicken Run is perhaps the best combination of musicality and lyrics of the fast tempo songs.
Katie Dear, which has the fewest references to mortality, shows the Brothers’ songwriting skills at their best, a love song with rich harmonies and a lyric about realization and acceptance.
The final verse of the ballad All When We Were Young seems to be referring to 9/11 but may very well be a reference to any war-torn country ravaged by air attack. Another highpoint has Boy From Lawrence County probably evoking The Band the most of any of the album’s songs with accordion permeating the sustained piano chords and fiddle plucking that carry the song about possible betrayal.
Cooperstown alludes to the nostalgia of our National Pastime with its references to Ty Cobb and baseball as metaphor for life.
The ball soared
The crowd roared
The scoreboard sweetly hummed
And tomorrow you’ll surely know whose won
The aforementioned Rise And Hope brings this outing to a peaceful and heart-driven conclusion. The band’s debut on Team Love is difficult to top. Yonder may not surpass it but keeps the Felice Brothers moving forward in their special musical direction.
The title comes from a Mark Twain story, Mysterious Stranger, in which townspeople stone and hang an apparently innocent woman for witchcraft while the Devil looks on. Satan says three of the crowd will soon be departing as well, one in five minutes, “Yonder is the clock.”
We are all slaves to that same clock. The Felice Brothers, who are at times partying hard over some of these heavy sentiments, seem to be saying we need to deal with it with a sense of humor and humility. Their songs provide both.