Born but not bred in a big city, I bobbled into the ‘burbs at age 10 after years overseas. Youth has its pluses, but—in the Northeast circa the mid-1970s, at least—not knowing how to grip a hockey stick wasn’t one. Nor was pop-culture ignorance. Outsiders gonna be outsiders for the remainder of their days, right?
I’m not sure why that occurred to me this morning, while listening yet again to “Holy Weight Champ,” the new single from Mikaela Davis that’s pulled from the 2-LP Felice County Fair set. I should state my ignorance upfront: While I’ve heard of the Felice Brothers, whose songs are celebrated in the compilation, I’ve never—to my knowledge—heard their music. Despite my feet-first approach to music discovery, there’s simply too much to wade through (and, hand-in-hand with that, never enough time). That said, according to Wikipedia, Ian, James and Simon Felice were born and raised in the Catskills before relocating to Brooklyn, where they busked in the subway; they released their debut in the mid-2000s and quickly accrued critical kudos from the likes of Mojo and Uncut. Yet, though I don’t know their songs, I am familiar with many of the artists who are part of the project, including Bright Eyes, Deer Tick, Bebe Stockwell, Brandon Flowers, the Lumineers, Nathaniel Rateliff, Phoebe Bridgers, Dawes, Jade Bird and, of course, Davis.
Though the 26-song album is a cool listen, it’s not the focus of this short piece; I’ll leave critical analysis to more learned listeners than I. “Holy Weight Champ,” however, is a cool slice of surreal poetry that delves into materialism, spirituality, and more, all while containing cavernous musical echoes of long ago. “It’s very Seventies,” Diane said when I played it for her yesterday. That’s more than just a fair assessment; to my ears, it possesses a Neil Diamond current, especially in the opening. (Play it back-to-back with “I Am, I Said” and you may hear it, too.) Whether I’m imagining it is, in every way, beside the point; it’s a wonderful song and performance, one that’s well worth seeking out.
(In an Instagram post, Mikaela—a fellow Catskillian—talks about how she came to record it, explaining how she integrated her harp and strings—and, too, how it influenced her to add add a spoken-word bit to Graceland Way’s “(That’s Not) Who I Wanna Be.”)
