[rating=3.00]
The Felice Brothers were always at their best when they balanced on that thin edge between discord and harmony, raw talent and musical limitation, guitar, accordion, and violin clashing in minor keys over a loose, driving snare, Ian and James’s deadpan vocal phrasing telling stories of souls lost, gunfights, and jilted lovers. Appreciation came from the tension created.
Their initial albums echoed the loose but precise feel of their former Woodstock, NY neighbors, in the Band and Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes. A loose control of their instruments, combined with an attitude and enthusiasm (likely alcohol fueled to some extent), were what made them appealing, they always dug deep and aspired high, even as they learned their craft, often seeming on the brink of being out of control, yet never crossing the line.
However at recent shows over the last year, I noted that they seemed to have lost that spirit, their sets seem unfocussed. Not having control of their instruments seemed less appealing than before, and their performance attitude seemed more like an inside joke and a bit rote. It was easy to conclude they had lost direction.
If that was true, they without doubt have found not the old, but a new direction with the release of Celebration,Florida. The new album releases them from the constraints of the folky “Americana” label, blowing up the limitations by pumping the genre full of new and seemingly incongruous sounds, bringing the music to a whole new place, maybe more expanding then imploding.
There’s almost too much going on in these 11 songs, synthesizers, horn arrangements, junkyard percussion effects, what sound like footsteps running down a hall, a children’s chorus. Recorded in an old high school gym, much time was spent on production, ably handled by long-time collaborator and sometime drummer, Jeremy Backofen, “the Searcher”. Effects come and go, lurking at times in the background, then lunging to the fore for brief assertions, before giving way to new sounds, then fading out leaving the basic folk instruments, the same but changed. James Felice described the album to AL.com as “dark and strange, so raw and natural…..a lot of it has a weird edge. So even though there are a lot of overdubs…its still us. It’s just a different way to express an idea.” One reviewer called the album “a perfect splash of sloppy.”
The usual crew of interesting, flawed characters inhabits the songs, characters and tales that would not be out of place in Dylan’s
John Wesley Harding: lost in a jumbled present, yearning for a return to a less uncertain past, even the dead try to return. Harlan’s zombie papa, “Dead and buried and he walked into town” is as interesting a premise as Dylan’s Frankie Lee and Judas Priest presented. Themes of sin and redemption, biblical allusions, pirates, loss, of love, of purpose are thrown in. Bits of life flash by, a twirl through an old radio dial brings up bits of interesting film noir sound bites, radio static, and a snippet of Leadbelly’s Fannin St. sung by Ian Felice in a voice from the past.
There are nods to other artists in many places. In addition to an overall Dylan feel, Ian’s vocal honors Hank Williams in “Dallas”, particularly in the lines “I never felt so alone”, the “alone” sung in a drawn out, broken yearning Hank yodel. It’s a tale of a B level TV host waiting on a runway to get home, a destination that seems to carry some dread as he refers to it as “this road to Calvary”, his only souvenir a velvet portrait.
”Cus’s Catskills Gym” starts with a guitar line borrowed from Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand”, “Refrain’s” opening synths echo Van Halens “Jump”, “Best I Ever Had” opens by echoing Jorma Kaukonen’s “Embryonic Journey” guitar before morphing into Mick Jagger’s acoustic part on ”Moonlight Mile.” The Beatles make several appearances; maybe most in the “Day In The Life” feel of “Oliver Stone”.
Because this album is very much a creation of the studio with its multitude of background percussion and voices mixed with synth parts, it will be interesting to see how they interpret the songs live as they tour this spring.
