I've Been Sleeping On The Felice Brothers For Too Long and You Shouldn't Make the Same Mistake

The Woodstock band laughs at the apocalypse while making one of the year's best records

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I’ve been on a Jean Claude Van Damme kick lately.

Currently, classics like Bloodsport, Kickboxer, Hard Target, or Timecop aren’t streaming anywhere, so I’ve been pushed to watching some of the later stuff that I’ve never seen. After a long overdue rewatch of the prototypical revenge tale in Lionheart, I found myself perusing Jeff Bezos’ Content Selector™ to feed my JCVD fix. Prime Video has only the best programming, which means I came across the 1998 deep cut, Knock Off.

Knock Off is essentially a ripoff of Rush Hour with Rob Schneider in Chris Tucker’s comedic sidekick role. It takes place during the British handoff of Hong Kong to China, with JCVD and Duece Bigelow trying to find out who is planting nano bombs in counterfeit jeans (spoiler: it’s the doublecrossing CIA agent Paul Sorvino) and is absolutely insane. By the looks of how sweaty Van Damme and Schneider are, this was clearly a paycheck for some more nose candy.

This brought us to last weekend when I gave The Felice Brothers’ magnificent new album, From Dreams to Dust a first spin. Halfway through the record, there’s a song called “Inferno.” As singer Ian Felice is setting up the acoustic number, he mentions, “Fight Club was sold out / we went to see Inferno instead / you said, ‘I never even heard of it / but I liked Karate Kid,’" before asking during the first chorus, “who’s that riding on the banks of Rio Grande? / it’s Jean Claude Van Damme / it’s Jean Claude Van Damme.”

The song wasn’t referencing Dante, but another late-’90s JCVD movie, and Felice spoke my language. From Dreams to Dust is full of these moments and characters fit for a Lou Reed tune with a memorable quip from each song. At the same time, there’s an uneasiness throughout with a backdrop of current times. The sharp dark humor is why From Dreams to Dust works so well - The Felice Brothers are here to remind us that even in a challenging and uncertain era, one can’t take the absurdity of the little moments for granted.

“I want for my music to do what the best music in my life has done for me. I want to do that for other people—to help them think through hard times or think through how to communicate something they didn’t know how to; to just make them happy. This may sound ironic, because my music is kind of dark sometimes, but the music I love best is just the most hopeful music like Pete Seeger singing about humanity getting along or Michael Hurley music that connects to some childlike simplicity that makes you feel light and happy. Music is a medicine. It can make our time on the planet a little more enjoyable.”

- Ian Felice

From Dreams to Dust is The Felice Brothers’ eighth studio album and the first that I’ve experienced. Sometimes labeled as “Americana,” I’ve been skipping them because the genre is complicated for me - most of the time, I’m going to roll my eyes at anything marked as such, especially with the “handclaps and whistles” that the genre has been stuck in for years now. For whatever reason, I gave this one a chance, and I’m feeling late to the party.

The Felice Brothers are originally from Woodstock, NY, started by Ian, James, and Simone Felice (who left the group in 2010). Citing Bob Dylan and The Band (both who lived for periods in Woodstock) as influences can be said for many acts, but The Felice Brothers put a unique spin on the formula. Ian Felice’s voice runs somewhere between Dylan and Scott McMicken of Dr. Dog and works perfectly with the harmonies of brother James and bassist Jesske Hume in her inaugural outing with the band. Also joining on the record is drummer Will Lawrence with appearances from Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott, both of Bright Eyes.

The playfulness in the face of uncertainty is a theme from the beginning with “Jazz On the Autobahn,” a song about a couple on the road in search of something new, while certain doom permeates the air. Or “To-Do List,” a scroll of Ian Felice’s mental checklist, which includes everything from canceling Better Homes and Gardens to befriending an “unfortunate lunatic” to learning all of the Supreme Court Justices. “Be at Rest” works in the same vein as Felice imagining his eulogy. Finality is a challenging subject, but “bathrobe often loosely tied,” “never once named employee of the month,” and “to his wife a box of undeveloped negatives and a bowl of onion soup” are the kind of lines one has to grin at.

“All the Way Down” is a gorgeous number sung by James Felice about humanity and artificial intelligence, led by Mogis’ Marxophone and Lawrence’s shuffling snare. On “Valium,” the band uses John Wayne and Annie Oakley to illustrate the mythization of the American West while ignoring the genocidal roots of colonial expansion. Taking place in a motel room while its occupant watches cowboy movies on tv, the song is a more authentic character study of the west than anything on the latest album by The Killers.

The record's back half finishes strong, starting with “Silverfish,” another James Felice number. The lyrical theme of lists returns, and it’s hard not to feel for the song’s character as his life falls apart around him. “Some guy from Leeds sends my girlfriend memes / one literally arrived as I was writing this line,” is another classic lyric, delivered in such heartfelt fashion that you believe the narrator’s refrain of “I gotta do something.”

“Land of Yesterdays,” “Blow Him Apart,” and “We Shall Live Again” is quite the run, with the final song being a masterpiece that runs over eight minutes. In the face of a great extinction, Felice assures, “we shall live again / though our religion is the same as the pigeon’s / from Francis of Assisi / to fans of AC/DC / we shall live again.”

In an increasingly rare feat, From Dreams to Dust is one of those albums that demands your full attention, and preferably good headphones - the restored church the album was recorded in plays out as its own character. With each listen, there is a new gift or drop of wisdom throughout this sprawling journey, as The Felice Brothers remind us we’re all looking for flashes of humanity in these gonzo times.

One of those moments of humanity is this record. Don’t wait any longer as I did. Listen to The Felice Brothers and From Dreams to Dust now.

From Dreams to Dust is available now on Yep Roc Records.