Bruce Springsteen, with and without the E Street Band. Bob Dylan. The Hold Steady. Tom Waits. The Replacements. The Afghan Whigs. Randy Newman. Drive-By Truckers. The Band. The Felice Brothers are likely to earn comparisons to every one, so better to say so early on.

The Felice Brothers is their first widely available release, following Tonight at the Arizona for U.K. indie Loose, and discs sold by the band at shows. Ian, Simone and James Felice hail from the Catskills, near Woodstock. Singly named compatriots Farley (washboards and fiddle) and Christmas (a rehabilitated dice player and bassist) add instrumental and biographical colour.

If the 15 songs on The Felice Brothers weren't honed to perfection — five tracks were previously recorded — it might come across as by-the-numbers Americana. There’s alcohol; religion (only faintly lapsed, with frequent nods to the Christmas season, often represented by forlorn Salvation Army horns); and guns, lots of guns. “Take This Bread” punctuates its spiritual imagery with actual gunshots — and on top of that, God-thanking gangstas. "Frankie's Gun!" earns its exclamation mark, a song aptly described as cinematic —if it were still the era when Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets rubbed shoulders with Springsteen's "Meeting Across the River," it would surely inspire a screenplay. Picture Steve Buscemi as a motormouth telegraphing his own undoing with every line. Now imagine it in the voice Keith Richards has been trying to achieve for longer than pianist and singer Ian Felice has been alive, and you might hear the song's irreverent bawl.

When every influence can be accessed, cut and pasted, a band must achieve more than the equivalent of a particularly lucky iPod shuffle. Like their forerunners, The Felice Brothers build songs through a series of close-ups, only to surprise by going wide. The result is an album of lasting value that also serves as that delightfully disposable rock ’n’ roll item, the soundtrack to your summer road trip.