The Felice Brothers Stream 'Valley of Abandoned Songs'

06-30-2024 12:33 PM EDT

(MPG) The Felice Brothers released their new full-length album Valley of Abandoned Songs, the first release on Conor Oberst's new label imprint Million Stars. The 13-song collection consists of recordings primarily from sessions for the band's 2019 album, Undress, as well as their most recent release, 2023's Asylum On The Hill, with band's current lineup of Ian Felice (guitar/vocals), James Felice (piano/vocals), Jeske Hume (bass), and Will Lawrence (drums). The band will kick off an album release tour with support from Dead Gowns on July 10 in State College, PA before making stops in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and more.

"A few years ago, I started revisiting old demos that had never seen the light of day and recordings that hadn't found a home on previous albums, and I started thinking of them as the Valley of Abandoned Songs," explains Ian Felice. "At a certain point, I realized that I had a particular group of tunes that worked really well as an album, and so I shared it with Conor, along with my idea to post it online, but he immediately texted back that he loved it so much he wanted to start a new record label just to put it out."

Felice adds: "There's a tightrope walk between light and dark in these songs between the magical wonder of existence and the ever-present sense of impending doom that comes with it. This album is my way of reconciling those things. A lot of these songs are amalgamations. The settings can change from verse to verse and scene to scene. I don't necessarily know who these characters are or where they come from, but they all evoke something very real in me."

The album's two singles "Crime Scene Queen" and "Flowers By The Roadside" garnered praise from the likes of BrooklynVegan, No Depression, Glide Magazine, and Paste Magazine, which praised Ian Felice's "sugar-sweet" vocals and called the song "one of the catchiest songs you'll hear all week."

Valley of Abandoned Songs follows the surprise release Asylum On The Hill, which was released exclusively on Bandcamp in December, and their 2021 album From Dreams To Dust which was praised by Rolling Stone, Consequence of Sound, Brooklyn Vegan, Cool Hunting, PopMatters, The Bluegrass Situation, Glide Magazine and many more. The New York Times' Jon Pareles called the album's lead single "To-Do List" "...romping honky-tonk existentialism," while American Songwriter praised their "...fascinating, articulate, never pretentious wordplay" and proclaimed, "This album demands the full attention of the listener, an old-school concept; those that put the most into it will get the most out of it."

Tour Dates:
7/10 - State College, PA - The State Theatre
7/11 - New York, NY - Bowery Ballroom
7/12 - Philadelphia, PA - World Cafe Live
7/13 - Cambridge, MA - The Sinclair
7/14 - Portland, ME - Space
7/16 - Pawtucket, RI - The Met
7/17 - Fairfield, CT - StageOne at FTC
7/23 - Buffalo, NY - MOHAWK PLACE
7/24 - Toronto, CA - Longboat Hall
7/25 - Cleveland, OH - Grog Shop
7/26 - Nelsonville, OH - Nelsonville Music Festival
7/26-28 - Chicago, IL - Wicker Park Fest
7/27 - Chicago, IL - Beat Kitchen
7/30 - Kalamazoo, MI - Bell's Brewery
7/31 - Pittsburgh, PA - Bottlerocket Social Hall
8/23 - Naples, NY - Hollerhorn Distilling
8/24 - Easthampton, MA - Arcadia Folk Festival
8/25 - Portsmouth, NH - 3S Artspace
10/29 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club
10/30 - Manchester, UK - Band on the Wall
11/1 - Sligo, Ireland - Sligo Live
11/2 - Dublin, Ireland - Button Factory
11/4 - Glasgow, UK - St Luke's
11/5 - Birmingham, UK - Hare & Hounds
11/6 - Cardiff, UK - The Globe
11/7 - London, UK - Electric Ballroom
11/9 - Bristol, UK - Strange Brew
11/10 - Brighton, UK - Chalk
11/12 - Amsterdam, Netherlands - Paradiso Noord
11/13 - Cologne, Germany - Luxor
11/15 - Berlin, Germany - Kulturhaus Peter Edel
11/16 - Weissenhauser Strand, Germany - Rolling Stone Beach