Over their career The Felice Brothers have applied broad brushstrokes to the Americana genre. They embody the rich meeting point of country, folk and bluegrass music – where the song comes first and the style is the framework upon which it sits. The latest album feels their most relaxed and natural in years. It rolls and sways along with intermittent bursts of exuberance, all louche and ramshackle like the brothers and their cohorts have just rolled out of bed in a shotgun shack and blearily-eyed laid down some tracks.

Ian Felice continues to explore his penchant for glorious twists on nursery rhyme phrasings that provide endless smiles and chuckles yet often, buried just below the surface, are concerns and fears about life in the modern world. His raspy, sandpapered voice gives the songs an air of a grizzled amiable hillbilly narrator, gregarious and wearied yet still with wisdom aplenty. Life In The Dark is The Band, Dylan and Waits surveying the modern landscape as we hurtle through it. There’s a melancholic and nostalgic view of the past in the rear mirror but also a lasting sense of que sera, sera on one of their finest albums to date.

Chris Familton