The Duke & the King, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” ** 1/2 (out of four)
This new indie-roots duo takes its name from “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” its album title from a Robert Frost poem and its sound from early-1970s folkies such as Cat Stevens and Neil Young. As you might expect, there isn’t much about “Nothing Gold Can Stay” (Ramseur), the Duke & the Kings debut, that suggests it was made during this century.
The Duke is Simone Felice, who until recently played drums in the Felice Brothers, a rollicking family band from upstate New York that released a terrific record earlier this year called “Yonder Is the Clock.” The King is Robert Chicken Burke, an old multi-instrumentalist pal of Felice’s, who has worked with George Clinton and Sweet Honey in the Rock.
The pair recorded the 10 songs here in a cabin turned studio near Woodstock, N.Y., and if their stay there involved lots of quiet evenings spent sipping stiff Irish coffees, then “Nothing Gold Can Stay” reflects it beautifully: This is hushed, deliberately paced acoustic music perfect for sitting around a fireplace pondering the coming thaw. “All our days are just so many waves in the wind,” Felice observes in “If You Ever Get Famous,” a supremely lovely line that hints at his other life as a novelist.
As pretty as this stuff is, though, it can get a little snoozy, as in “Union Street,” in which a maddeningly metronomic drumbeat slows things to a swamp-soul crawl. With his brothers, Felice has shown he’s capable of injecting old-school roots music with fresh energy; without them, he tends to drag his feet.