Apologies to Todd Haynes and I'm Not There, but Bob Dylan in the mid-1960s alone was like a Venn diagram showing several different versions of Dylan overlapping. There was Dylan in the studio, recording the game-changing trio of Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, and Blonde on Blonde. There was Basement Tapes Dylan. There was Dylan and the Hawks, out on tour. There was Dylan at home in Woodstock, recovering from his motorcycle crash (maybe) while defending his young family from psycho fans prowling for The Truth (definitely). And then, shared by all sets, there was the Dylan enigmatic even to the singer himself. This is the Dylan that, on "60 Minutes", cited "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and declared: "Try to sit down and write something like that. There's a magic to that, and it's not a Siegfried and Roy kind of magic, you know? It's a different kind of a penetrating magic."
Tell it to those unfortunate souls that continually set out to channel Bob Dylan, inevitably capturing the sound but rarely the "penetrating magic." The same goes for acts out to mimic the Band, let alone Bob Dylan and the Band. But while even Bob Dylan may not know what makes Bob Dylan tick, one suspects fellow upstate New York enigmas (by design) the Felice Brothers have clearly taken copious notes.
Who knows whether or not the Felice Brothers-- brothers Ian, Simone, and James, plus a friend called Christmas-- are actually, consciously trying to come as close as possible to replicating Dylan an/or the Band on their self-titled latest. Regardless, the point is, whether they intended to or not, they've come eerily, awkwardly, creepily close to capturing that familiar mix of mood, mystery, atmosphere, and aesthetic. It's an act of brazen affectation, to be sure, but you've got to half admire the band's balls. Besides, it's not as if Dylan and the sainted Band had clean hands themselves. A Jewish kid from Minnesota posing as a hobo folk poet anti-hero in New York, hooking up with a bunch of Canadians playing Southern sharecropper Civil War reenactors? Hats off all around, guys.
Like the fragments and experiments cut by Dylan and the Band that comprise the famed Basement Tapes, many tracks on The Felice Brothers sound like they were written a few minutes before they were recorded, little sketches fleshed out just enough to form proper songs. The likes of "Ruby Mae", "Helen Fry", and "Frankie's Gun!"-- like two other tracks on the disc, recycled from the Felice Brothers' earlier Adventures of the Felice Brothers Vol. 1-- are detail-rich and pleasingly loose songs, buoyed by rubbery bass, barrelhouse piano, organ, and nicely ramshackle guitars. If they're not first takes, they may as well be.
But rootsy authenticity is one thing, and self-consciously retro rootsy authenticity is another. It takes a massive suspension of disbelief to buy into the sloppy sing-alongs of "Love Me Tenderly", "Take This Bread", and "Greatest Show on Earth" (on the latter two tracks, the Band influence grows almost obnoxious with the introduction of horns). The accordion and shuffling drums of "Radio Song" are genial enough, but the song doesn't really go anywhere. The boho busker Dylanisms of "Tip Your Way" are too annoying to be salt of the earth, while elsewhere anachronistic references (plus loaded lyrical references to "pillbox hats" and the like) border a tad on the smug side, tipping a hand best played closer to the vest (just ask Marah).
And that, in the end, is what hinders such an otherwise harmless exercise. Maybe played with more of a wink, the Felice Brothers could be good knowing fun. Played (apparently) straight, all it does is highlight how much better Dylan and the Band channeled the spirit of (in the words of Greil Marcus) the "old, weird America," not by mimicking what came before but by creating their own alternate well of inspirations from which to draw. Why accept a substitute when you can listen to the real, fake thing?
