Simone Felice is heading to UK shores this month for a series of live dates commencing in Bath. This promises to be a very intimate and unforgettable tour as he takes in some of the best known venues from the Trades Club at Hebden Bridge to Union Chapel in London (full dates below). To mark the event he has released a new EP ‘New York Times‘ via the very good folks at Reveal Records (Joan as a Policewoman, State of the Union). The EP will be available on the tour before it hits the street on 22nd October.
The EP features ‘New York Times’ (taken from ‘Simone Felice’) as well as four unreleased out-takes from the debut album sessions, three of which are previously unheard. The track ‘War Movie‘ is available as a free download below. It was pulled from his last album “for one of those weird reasons that seem so important when you make the final cut, but often turn out to be meaningless as time goes by.” It is a beautiful track, the musical sparseness creates some breath-taking moments as Simone delivers poetic lyrics conjured in the Catskill mountains where he regulalry records at dawn, “the magic hour” he called it in our interview with him this year. His voice carries an incredible fragility, pure static that will raise the hairs on your neck…
“come on you faithless sons of man, come all you Brooklyn girls, your cheeks all fire and mayhem, where did you sleep last night nobody knows, guess that’s the way that war movies go”
In Simone’s own words:
“‘War Movie’ was one of the first songs I wrote for the album. I recorded it around the same time as ‘Charade’, maybe the same day. Later on my brother James played the most haunted, subtle accordion on it, which I loved and still do. And though this one moved me just as much as any of the songs that made the album, I kept it off, for one of those weird reasons that seem so important when you make the final cut, but often turn out to be meaningless as time goes by.
Why War Movie? Because love is a war. Love is a mad horse, and hard to catch, its mouth foams, it hobbles, it dances drunk from tree to tree in the dark and screams your name in the fray…”
‘New York Times’ Tracklisting:
1. New York Times
2. The Radio
3. War Movie
4. Great Big Circle
5. California
SIMONE FELICE UK TOUR DATES 2012:
Sep 14 – Chapel Arts Centre, Bath
Sep 15 – The Duchess, York
Sep 16 – The Musician, Leicester
Sep 17 – The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge
Sep 18 – The Maltings, Ely
Sep 20 – Arts Centre, Norwich
Sep 21 – Union Chapel, London
Sep 22 – The Greystones, Sheffield
Sep 24 – The MetBury
Sep 25 – Kazimer, Liverpool
Following these UK dates, Simone will then return to the US to support Connor Oberst (Bright Eyes, Monsters Of Folk).