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It’s one of the most daring stunts he ever pulled - the entire two-ton facade of a house falls down around him, his lithe body just barely passing through the open attic window. It all comes crashing down. Buster Keaton and his crew really did this, there was no trick to it except the use of measuring tape. Electricians reportedly walked off the set, protesting its actual danger. And in the film, after the bricks and lumber crumble but before the dust settles, Keaton’s character takes a laughable beat before finally registering the wreckage and running off.
Standing in bemusement in the new rubble of their lives and singing, such are the lonely, lovely souls on James Felice’s debut solo album “The Little Ones,” a tragicomic world where doubting thomas astronauts hear the hum of God, determined mourners bust down the door, and fallen angels with broken legs singing from a barstool fail to seal the deal. Wounded and alone, churchless in Babylon, the people inhabiting this album are vivid in their confessions, they are triumphantly vulnerable, and yet in the depths of their heartbreak they can still crack a good joke. How else are you gonna get through it but with a laugh and a tune?
Chances are that by now you’re already familiar with the Felice Brothers of Catskill, New York, one of our brightest burning lights in the family band firmament. Exuberant, spirited, often disarmingly whimsical and rooted in the hootenanny, the various combinations of brothers and chosen family members that have made up the workhorse band have been at it for nearly twenty years, gone from beloved subway buskers to touring act and festival stage mainstays over the course of ten albums. They are famously Connor Oberst’s favorite band - they’ve backed him up and put out records on two of his labels. Throughout the Brothers’ run, James Felice has always cut a distinctive figure on stage - just to the right of his brother Ian, pulling to and fro the bellows of an accordion, head thrown back in ecstatic vocal harmony. But the lunch pail road dogs are getting older, these days it’s a lot less fun to sleep on a bus, what kind of real work can you do when playing songs has been your whole life? Just as he appears in the album art, James is at the party alone now, spilled wine running down the tablecloth, the sun rising in the distance budges a foot in the door.
On “The Little Ones” James joins the long lineage of winking American tearjerkers, the great crying-in-your-beer smart alecs like Warren Zevon, John Prine, or even Tom Waits. With a similar rollicking ease on keyboard instruments, Felice sidles up next to Doctor John and bears Randy Newman’s torch, frequently squeezing the blood of a catchy chorus from the stone of an unlikely song subject. And his sometimes wounded, side-of-the-mouth vocal delivery brings longtime collaborator Bright Eyes to mind. But this album is far more intimate than the music of his forebears - captured mostly at home and often late at night, these songs are spacious and confessional, a simple drum machine pattern just barely keeping them lashed to the Earth, longtime Felice Brothers producer Jeremy Backofen keeping it simple, direct, and effective. More often than not the record is James and his chords, with a hint of the occasional bass, drumset, or fiddle gilding the edges of the frame. These songs sound like the things you can only say after most everyone else has fallen asleep.
A word about James’ Instagram account: it contains far less music than you would guess. Instead he has shared dozens - maybe hundreds? - of pictures of shiny, mechanically ingenious, perfectly made bugs. Insects, winged creatures, beetles and flies, arachnids, crawlers, stingers, caterpillars munching on a leaf, six legged buddies crawling up someone’s leg. He’s noticing with joy and broadcasting the little things that buzz in the garden. And in the music it is the little things, the little flourishes, the iridescent flashes of captured poetry or the fluttering wings of vocal harmony that make this album so wonderful to hear. For instance, there is a heartbreaking, specific poignancy to the song “If I Were Not a Man, I Would Cry” being sung to someone named Bill.
From the heavens unto the dive bar, from the love unto the ashes, from the garden to the bloom, from the home unto the rubble, “The Little Ones” paints watercolor portraits of heart-aching humans dwelling on the threshold. On album closer “Tiny Man” Felice returns to the firmament with a haunting song from the point of view of someone who is confident that there’s nothing else out there beyond our blue marble but inky blackness and silence. We are alone, they conclude with certainty, until a melody - a wordless, disavowing chorus - emerges from the dark. How dare you think that you’re truly alone?