Yonder IS the Clock is the band’s second major release. The Felice Brothers have been slowly drawing larger audiences with their excellent live show. How does the new disc hold up to the previous high standards set by their self titled? Read on.

1. The Big Surprise 9.1/10

Your jazzy band has lost its swing
Revolution’s lost its dream

The song builds incredibly slowly, with poignant lyrics and various noise effects sprinkled throughout. The pace picks up a touch into a big tromping piano chord. A moody, worthwhile opener.

2. Penn Station 8.7/10

Americana rock played perfectly and sung with conviction. An uplifting piece that gets your blood going, if not your feet.

3. Buried In Ice 9.2/10

was walking the streets alone
In a city of metal and snow
Up came a song from the radio towers
“Wee Small Hours”
And then came an army of clarinets
And the terrible hiss of cassettes

A slow piece with a heartbreaking tone. I’m hearing a song about scientists, time travel and of course, ice. It makes no sense but the imagery is pretty cool, as is the music itself.

4. Chicken Wire 9/10

“Roll down the window, idiot! The roller skating waitress is here with our food. After we eat, we need to hit the drive-in theater with Bobby and Sue.”

5. Ambulance Man 9.8/10

Haunting, reverbed accordion opens the song, followed by melancholic guitar with a hint of very early Stones. The same accordion retreats, then returns expertly throughout the song. The Felice brothers load this one up with lots of faded imagery, a haunting past:

Here comes the rain
Hounding old coney island again
Here come the sharks
Tearing my good neighbors apart

You can just picture the Coney Island day, the amusement rides spinning, and the tips of shark fins just off the shore. The song breaks into a stunning big finish, as if the man in the ambulance is reliving his youth and asking the driver just to cruise around his old neighborhood, forgetting the hospital in the process, enjoying his last minutes.

ambulance man
please let me ride
I’m at the end

6. Sailor Song 8.0

A dreary number with a swirling, smoky feel centered by a hushed and husky voice. It’s the last words of a drowning sailor as his ship goes down. Despair and ultimate resignation in ending up at the bottom of the sea.

7. Katie Dear 9.2/10

An absolutely wicked melody. Simple strumming guitar along with ghostly electric piano push the song along. A subdued horn solo evokes unexpectedly intense emotion.

And all our children will sing along
They’ll sing “Louisiana ain’t that bad
When all you’ve had’s Louisiana”

8. Run Chicken Run 8.9/10

“We snuck Bobby and Sue in the trunk at the drive-in, and they caught on to us. Split Johnny, split!”

9. All When We Were Young 9.5/10

You were my favorite, my favorite
We’d shed our Dungarees, do anything you please
Some night we’d get so high, we’d be like Jesus Christ

A beautiful look back at innocent youth, or not so innocent as the case may be. The band plays it perfectly without it becoming a cliche or overproduced. There’s a lot going on in the background although it’s not always readily apparent.

10. Boy From Lawrence County 10/10

An unbridled masterpiece full of exceedingly sharp lyrical imagery and powerful music. Easily a candidate for song of the year in every possible genre.

Tell me Judge. what’s the bounty
On that boy from Lawrence County?
He’s a friend of mine

Rolling acoustic guitar is punctuated by a floating accordion and deep single note piano strikes. The build up and release is not unlik that of a large, rolling river.

11. Memphis Flu 8.5 10/10

“We got away from theater security and now we’re drinking waaay too much in Johnny’s basement! Weeeeeee!”

12. Cooperstown 9.8/10

A majestic and soaring track about baseball, the greatest American pastime. The Felice Brothers have a ridiculous talent for imagery, and it’s on full display here:

Ty Cobb
You’re dead and gone
You had a game like a war machine
And through the great
Hall of Fame you wander

In Tigers Field
A girl in heels
She had a face like a magazine
And through the long metal stands she wandered

Baseball ghosts, girlfriends past, wide deep rivers and the roar of the crowd in America a long time ago. Whispers of those before us, with the future pomise of a sunny afternoon at the ball park.

13. Rise and Shine 9.5/10

But we won’t be changed
We’ll remain as one
Come rise and shine
Old pal of mine
You got one more day

A ballad to end the album – thoughtful, poetic and warm. Slow piano chords, revolving horn and drums that sound like a slow railroad car plowing up a steep mountain. It’s a fitting end to one of the most epic Americana albums we have heard in quite some time. The music is performed flawlessly. The tone of the instruments is minimal, not drenched in cheesy studio effects. The Felice Brothers sound like an actual band rather than a Pro Tools project, and that’s very refreshing in 2009. The lyrical content is of high quality – the best so far we have heard/read this year. The musical arrangements combined with the imagery create a tightly honed emotional blade, cutting through the listeners psyche with the weight of a century of history, both the lows and the highs. Everything about this album is believable and sincere. It is not some forced project just for the sake of releasing an album. This thing was nurtured and cared for.

Some other blog reviews seem to bring up the Dylan and the Band, but what the Felice Brothers are doing here is traditional folk and rock Americana which precedes that by quite some time. There seems to be an unreasonable number of writers who think that anything Americana is automatically some sort of Dylan cover and not worthy. This is laughable and demonstrates just how shallow their musical knowledge really is. Strange that this standard is not applied to the countless Bowie, Barrett, Pavement and Velvet Underground clones that dominate the urban indie scene every year.

Overall an outstanding record, both fulfilling promise, but also revealing even more.

Response Keywords after hearing this album:

focused, well crafted, emotional, melancholic, frisky, lyrical, powerful, history, sincere, uplifting

Album Total 9.3

You can buy a hard copy of Yonder Is the Clock here:

Yonder Is The Clock