Album: Simone Felice, Simone Felice (Reveal)

Having himself suffered considerable setbacks in his 20-something years, Simone Felice should be well placed to track the threads of tragedy in his briefly sketched narratives about characters like the lost girlfriend "Stormy-Eyed Sarah", the doomed "Dawn Brady's Son", and the sexual predator cruising for a deserved bruising in "Hey Bobby Ray".

But Felice fails to animate them in the manner of comparable storytellers like Johnny Dowd and Richmond Fontaine's Willy Vlautin, and thus leaves one's interest unignited. Murmured in breathy, tremulous manner over routine Americana arrangements of guitar and keys, they seem awash in bogus pity, an impression that becomes more problematic when dealing with the real-life protagonists of "Courtney Love" and "Ballad of Sharon Tate", which just come across as exploitative.

DOWNLOAD THIS Hey Bobby Ray; New York Times