The Felice Brothers - Valley of Abandoned Songs (Black LP)

The Felice Brothers first emerged from the Hudson Valley nearly two decades ago with a gloriously ramshackle sound that drew on everything from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan to Walt Whitman and Flannery O’Connor. In just a few short years, the group went from busking in the subway to playing Radio City Music Hall with Bright Eyes and appearing everywhere from the Newport Folk Festival to Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble. Beginning with 2007’s Tonight At The Arizona, the band helped pave the way for the modern folk revival, while at the same time challenging its boundaries and conventions with bold sonic experimentation and unyielding integrity. The New York Times likened their music to “the rootsy mysticism of the Band,” while Rolling Stone praised the “scrappiness” of their “folk-rock noir,” and The Guardian hailed their songs as “impeccably crafted, with literary-minded lyrics that are both playful and profound.”

The band’s newest record, Valley of Abandoned Songs, marks The Felice Brothers’ debut for Conor Oberst’s new Million Stars label and showcases the group at their most intimate and unvarnished. Balancing hope and despair in equal measure, the album explores the search for meaning and connection through the eyes of a wide-ranging cast of misfits and outcasts, and though the recordings here span several years of almost-lost tunes, the result is a thoroughly cohesive collection that manages to feel both utterly timeless and particularly attuned to the present all at once.

Tracklisting:

Side A:

1. Crime Scene Queen
2. Flowers By The Roadside
3. New York By Moonlight
4. Younger As The Days Go By
5. So Long John
6. Black Is My True Love’s Hair
7. Raccoon, Rooster And Crow

Side B:

1. Stranger’s Arms
2. Birdies
3. Tomorrow Is Just A Dream Away
4. Let Me Ride Away With The Horsemen
5. It’s Midnight And The Doves Are In Tears
6. To Be A Papa