My Top Twenty-One of 2021: #2

2. The Felice Brothers - From Dreams To Dust

All hail my new favourite band! I've only been tangentially aware of the Felice Brothers until now, but their latest record made me a true believer and set me on a journey through their impressive back catalogue that looks set to keep me delighted for a long time to come.

Ian & James Felice write Americana with a very individual voice. As with tomorrow's Number One record, the lyrical detail here is what impresses me most and keeps me digging further, although this is often more stream of consciousness than storytelling. But their ideas are unique, highly engaging and often bring a smile to my face, from the wide-ranging goals of their To-Do List...

Wash all the pots and linens

Find a psychoanalyst

Go the bank and deposit checks

Sweep up the shattered dish

Return everything that I've borrowed

Change all the bloody gauze

Buy a spinach colored dinner jacket

Defy all natural laws

Ooh oh oh, cancel better homes and gardens

Ooh oh oh, admire gothic arches

...to their reverence for the forgotten Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, Inferno...

We were Seventeen

Hoping for better things

Like worms waiting for wings

And high school rings

Fight Club was sold out

We went to see Inferno instead

You said, "I never even heard of it

But I liked Karate Kid"

Who's that riding on the banks of the Rio Grande?

Jean Claude Van Damme

They write their own eulogy on Be At Rest...

Mister Felice, six foot tall

One hundred and forty-eight pounds

Soft teeth, sleep deprived, below average student

Owner of two ill-fitting suits

Wearer of hand me downs

Often lukewarm, and withdrawn

Bathrobe often loosely tied

Be at rest my friend

Be at rest

...and manage to rhyme Francis of Assissi with AC/DC on the epic album closer, We Shall Live Again. 

But perhaps best of all is the opening track, the Felice Brothers' vision of the apocalypse. It sounds like REM playing Steely Dan, or like Jazz On The Autobahn...

It won't look like those old frescoes, man, I don't think so

There will be no angels with swords, man, I don't think so

No jubilant beings in the sky above, man, I don't think so

And it won't look like those old movies neither

There will be no drag racing through the bombed out streets neither

No shareholders will be orbiting the earth, man, neither

It will be hard to recognize each other through our oxygen masks

The successful sons of businessmen will set their desks on fire

While 5-star generals of the free world weep in the oil choked tide