The Duke and the King – Nothing Gold Can Stay

Album Reviews • Thursday October 1st, 2009 • 11:04 am

Fans of The Felice Brothers are probably well aware that brother and drummer Simone has, for the time being, amicably left his brothers’ band to form his own. The new band is called The Duke and the King and has two primary members: Simone Felice and his friend, Robert “Chicken” Burke. Those familiar with American literature may recognize this band name as coming from two swindlers in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is a fitting name for the band as the music on Nothing Gold Can Stay (another American literary reference for you Robert Frost fans) is purely American in both its music and spirit.

Although Nothing Gold Can Stay is the creative project of one of The Felice Brothers, don’t put this disc in the CD player expecting the same energy and vigor heard earlier this year on the lively Yonder is the Clock. Simone Felice is in full introspective mode here and these songs mostly drift by at a peaceful, leisurely pace. This is understandable considering the circumstances surrounding the writing of the album. Roughly half of the album was written while Felice’s wife was pregnant with their first child and the other half was written after they suffered a late-term miscarriage. The result is an album on which the joyful songs are tinged with sadness but the sad songs manage to foster small rays of hope.

This is evident on one of the album’s strongest offerings, its opener, “If You Ever Get Famous.” It’s a song that could have come right out of CSNY’s early 1970s folk-pop with its gentle acoustic guitar, vocal harmonies, and breezy percussion. Felice delivers a moving performance as he warns a loved one (perhaps his unborn child) of the joys and hazards of fame. This song has the power to knock the listener flat because of the tenderness and emotional tone in Felice’s voice. On first listen it appears to be fairly lighthearted but subsequent plays reveal some deep undercurrents of sorrow.

Actually, Felice’s voice adds a lot of the allure to The Duke and the King’s record as he channels both Marvin Gaye and Cat Stevens. It doesn’t hurt that Nothing Gold Can Stay also boasts some very strong lyrics, which certainly aid the vocal performances. Felice, a published novelist, has an undeniable skill with words and he communicates that well throughout the record as he tackles issues like religion, love, and war with cleverness and clarity, sometimes touching on all of these themes in one song (the tragic and unforgettable “One More American Song”).

As great as the lyrics are, it’s the song that boasts the fewest words that might be the most memorable of the album. While most of the songs follow a traditional song structure built on an acoustic guitar, “Lose My Self” features a keyboard, a wild, distorted guitar, and a ghostly radio fading in and out as the song slowly falls off the tracks. It’s less than three minutes long but it’s the most exciting moment found here. Nothing Gold Can Stay is a fine record, but it would have been better had more of the songs captured this same electric energy.

Tagged as: indie folk, New York