The Felice Brothers - Yonder Is The Clock

The upstate New York dusty buskers have been subjected to some criticism in the past. Try not to mention Bob Dylan in conversation with this dustbowl, roots outfit because, let’s face it, that tiresome analogy is played out, dull and, judging by their third studio output, inaccurate.

The mythology and depression of country music is partly what makes the genre so romanticised. Where their self-titled 2008 effort honed in on money troubles, alcoholism and the woeful tread of dead end town philosophies, their third release depicts a more experienced journey from their home town to the struggles they encountered elsewhere.

Rusty-folk opener ‘Penn Station’ jigs with both the enthusiasm and hardship of their move Brooklyn during their early days when the subway at Greenwich Village would double up as a platform for their impromptu busks. Big city livin’ must have been a tough move for the brothers and their washboard, fiddle wielding cohorts, as songs like ‘Chicken Wire’ and ‘Memphis Flu’ would suggest. They’re country folk, and although they’ve diminished the routine marching drum of their parents and cast away futures that predict mediocre routines and farmland graft, their hearts are clearly still firmly buried in the dusty land of their home town.

Album closer, ‘Rise And Shine’, is a slow ditty. The dirty yap of Ian Felice takes a sombre pathway for this melancholic hum in which delicate pianos tinkle unobtrusively like the subtle narration of a sincere love letter.

With such an earnest record, the Felice Brothers have established themselves as a genuine force in country music that is slowly branching out its confined generics. Roots and rock cross with upbeat, grubby skits, and they‘re clearly sitting on a gold mine of ideas. In three albums they’ve built themselves the future they wanted, the one they truly desired, and more importantly, as the late Ronnie Van Zant once sang, ‘You can take a boy out of Dixieland, but you can’t take old Dixie out the boy.’

Indulge in the video below, what a voice!