Once upon a time I took my significant other to see her favorite songwriter, Connor Oberst. More memorable, for me at least, was the greatest opening and I’ve ever seen, and a song that changed my life. The Felice Brothers had a wild and authentic energy. They were timeless and classless. Each song was like a tiny movie that you wish you could see more clearly. You got the idea that they genuinely wanted to adopt the whole crowd as honorary Felice siblings. Then, they announced the drummer was going to sing. The oldest brother, Simone, got up from behind the kit and picked up an acoustic guitar. Then I heard the voice and the words that have haunted me in the best way possible ever since.
I don’t remember if he announced the name of the song before he started it, but even if I had to wait to the end of the first verse to find out I was hooked. React how you will, but I have always felt an affinity for the devil as a symbol, an allegory, a character. I’m a weirdo, a rebel, a reject, someone who feels even the villain deserves sympathy. I question things others seem to take as givens. I am the king of fire and desire and hell is my aesthetic. Anyway. When I heard that line sung in that voice it was like a personal invitation I couldn’t turn down. So here we go.
Pharaoh, my pharaoh, my Bonnie is dead. Who is this Pharaoh and why does our singer answer to them? I didn’t know Twin Peaks at the time I first heard the song, but it feels like foreshadowing with just the right combination of confusing spirits and the dear girl’s corpse. This Bonnie lies not over the ocean, but in the back seat with sex and death, and which one would be more responsible for that tear in her dress? The Felice Brothers are a mutant strain of Americana, so naturally this fateful evening started at a drive in movie, where Bonnie asked our singer to show her the devil is real. Is he the devil? Is he possessed? Did he do the dirty deed and leave her in his Chevrolet? Is this all just a metaphor, is it fiction or hearsay? Too many questions and not a damn answer to be found, not even on Bonnie’s naked body. She’s got a birthmark on her arse shaped like a gallows and a cross. Sex and death and God are all here my pharaoh, but who is driving the damn Camaro? And where is it going?
Across the Queensboro bridge, of course, by way of F Scott Fitzgerald. This verse seems anomalous. Talking of the exhilarating journey the brothers have undertaken to peddle their songs across this holy holey land. Howling their way, however, is a more sinister word choice than others, but maybe the wolves are not what they seem.
I don’t know if the singer is the devil, but it’s clear by the end of the song that old Scratch is in the driver’s seat, or at least directing the car. Maybe it’s the devil that drives the singer on. Maybe he’s hoping to ditch the Beelzebub somewhere along the way. But friend or foe, there are only three truths in this endless night. Bonnie is dead. This is America. And the Devil is Real.
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