All The Bright Coins

Album review

It's not terribly hard to imagine what led Simone Felice to part ways with his siblings in the Felice Brothers and strike out on his own as a solo artist. Without Simone, the Felice Brothers have a tendency to embrace a playfulness that falls just short of goofy. Writing for himself, Simone isn't without humor and he possesses a very genuine joie de vivre. However, his imagination is clearly sparked by life's major dramas, and he approaches his themes with the bold, impassioned tone of a great poet. On 2022's All The Bright Coins, Felice shows no fear of his actorish side, so much so that four of its eleven tracks are spoken word pieces accompanied by music, where he fills his delivery with plenty of theatrical brio, and when he sings, his thoughts are mired in misadventures of the past and a sense of loss that pervades his present. It would be very easy for this sort of material to sound a bit pretentious, and it's a testament to Felice's talent that All The Bright Coins never slips over the border into melodrama. His passion registers as sincere and honest on every track, his vocals have a nimble stride that draws in the listener and keeps them engaged. His knack for the details of a life lived with less caution than might be advisable serves him well, giving it all a heady gravity that's hard to resist. Felice's talents as a producer and arranger play a significant role in the success of All The Bright Coins; his vocals dominate this album, but the accompaniment, often spare and artfully weaving in and around these stories, is superb and the execution is impressive. Simone Felice wears his heart on his sleeve on All The Bright Coins, and while that's an easy way for an artist to sound foolish, in this case he's created something brave and exciting in its embrace of the human spirit, and it's often strikingly beautiful.
© Mark Deming /TiVo