Live Free (Tour EP 2011)
Limited edition CD EP made for December 2011 UK tour, includes solo demos and live versions of 5 new, unreleased songs as well as a popular live staple, a cover of Warren Zevon's 'For My Next Trick I'll Need A Volunteer."
Franz Nicolay "Luck & Courage" CD/Vinyl
"It's who you leave behind, it's not who you save/That you'll be judged by."
In Mother Night, Kurt Vonnegut coined the term "a nation of two" to describe that stage of love in which a couple seems to be creating their own self-contained world, with its own language and culture. In Franz Nicolay's haunted and redemptive album Luck & Courage, he expands the idea and writes the history of the rise and fall of one such country, one inhabited by the titular characters Felix & Adelita - luck & courage. "They're untethered," Nicolay says of the protagonists. "She's a sometime bartender, he's been in the service, he's a little violent and she's a little distant; they don't really live in any one place - and they've accustomed themselves, at some point, to the idea that ultimately their lives are going to be their own responsibility, so that when they find themselves together, almost against their will, their nation of two is doomed before it even begins. They're so used to leaving things behind, they don't remember how to stay - a battle between the pull of domesticity and the habit of packing up and moving on. And so their story, and the story of their nation of two, becomes the story of a plague-ridden, Cormac McCarthyian country as its society collapses."
5/5 Album of the Month: "'Luck and Courage' is a masterclass in instrumentation, arrangements and poetic musings...[It] is a work of grand proportions that deserves to be heard. This is Nicolay's Sgt. Pepper." themusiccritic.co.uk
"His songs are peculiar and unsettling, elegant and sparse. Think Mountain Goats' John Darnielle fronting a gypsy band." - Crawdaddy
Franz Nicolay "Major General" CD/Vinyl
A melodramatic grab-bag of full-throated songs, stories, and days of wine & roses; shamelessly strident, stentorian and more than a little sentimental. Major General is rich with tales of punk-rock disillusionment, redemption, nostalgic regret, ruthless self-interrogations & reinvention, and defiant yet affectionate apologies. It's a new look for the stylishly vaudevillian jack-of-all-trades with the Jimmy Durante and death's-head-accordion tattoos. A new stop on a hobo's-trail of intelligent, incisive hedonism that's taken him through anarcho-circus punk, Balkan-gypsy, new chamber music, and anthemic classic rock.
Pitchfork: 7.3 "Nicolay's skill at playing punk sage on one song and slightly troubled troubadour on the next is really something special."
UNCUT: 4-stars, Debut Album of the Month
Q: "Recasting the windswept folk artist as someone with piratical swagger, he comes over like Nick Cave leading an American Pogues, and every see-saw rhythm is shot through with a potent, whisky-drenched drama.
World/Inferno Friendship Society "Addicted To Bad Ideas" CD/Vinyl
The legendary punk rock orchestra elucidate the 20th century through the a song cycle tracing the life of world-battered, morphine-crazed, tragi-comic character actor Peter Lorre. The manically beautiful song-spiel trips through vampires, Berlin, strings, horns, anti-fascist action, '40's Hollywood, piano, guitar, drums and heroism with a good criminal heart and a smile for which to die. The album, soundtrack to the acclaimed theatrical presentation, follows Lorre’s enigmatic existence from formative days alongside Wedekind and Brecht through the cycle of World Wars to a pitiless fall from grace in the drug-infused quagmire of Hollywood vines."
World/Inferno Friendship Society "Red-Eyed Soul" CD / Double Gatefold Vinyl
The World/Inferno Friendship Society give you your damn soul back. It's been up all night, thinks everything is hysterical, and keeps humming tunes about Halloween and heroes, love lost and found, and the chivalry of crime. It sweats like whiskey and cries real red wine. It's chiding your friends for being so sad, mumbling, "You bouncers don't scare me one bit," and yelling "I joined a punk-rock band to break stuff, not to sit around lawyers' offices!" at inappropriate moments. Fifteen new songs by NYC's original international Punk-Rock Orchestra of elegant and angry Gentlemen and Ladies produced by Hardcore legend Don Fury and released by New Jersey Pioneer Punk-Rock label Chunksaah! The piano croons, the guitars shout, the drummers threaten, saxophones rip you from where you are tied to the mast, the accordion just stole your wallet, the string section is whispering in your ear, "don't be a jerk," and boys and girls are singing in harmony "only anarchists are ! . . . pretty!" Life is a cabaret, the circus is leaving town, don't forget the struggle, don't forget the streets.
Franz Nicolay "St. Sebastian of the Short Stage" 10" EP
Quick on the heels of his acclaimed solo debut Major General, Franz Nicolay has a new 4-song 10" entitled St. Sebastian of the Short Stage. Pressed on clear vinyl, it includes a collaboration with the Dresden Dolls, the best mariachi-disco tribute to a retired superhero yet recorded, and couple bleeding-heart weepies. Artwork by VICE Magazine's Nicholas Gazin, a similarly-mustachioed ex-accordion student of Nicolay's, includes a pullout poster insert; and an exclusive new short story by Nicolay entitled "Paraska Mikhailivna Is A Witch," about dead livestock and bluegrass music in rural Ukraine."
Sound Salvation Army: "They say storytelling is a lost art in our digital age...But there is hope out there for those that value the power of the written word, the art of a well-constructed story. His name is Franz Nicolay...At a time when words are losing their value and importance it is goddamn wonderful to experience the work of someone who holds them sacrosanct and knows how to dress them up and show them off."
Anti-Social Music "Is The Future Of Everything"
Anti-Social Music's debut record, "Sings The Great American Songbook," was received as everything from "punk's next breath" (Real Detroit Weekly) to "nearly unlistenable" (Pitchfork). Never ones to take a hint, the incorrigible new-music collective celebrates its tenth anniversary year with "Anti-Social Music Is The Future Of Everything," a state-of-the-union grab bag that restates ASM's whiskey-soaked and combat-booted commitment to new chamber music as the last bastion of socially unacceptable sounds. Produced in part by group founder Franz Nicolay, the album finds room for processed water droplets, triangle-driven bastard ragtime, a rec-room mass, the aptly-named "grunt work for the avant-garde," and a nihilistic setting of Hunter S. Thompson's suicide note. With artwork by Vice Magazine's Nicholas Gazin, Anti-Social Music reminds you that things are bad, they're likely to get worse, and that string quartet on the deck of the Titanic probably wasn't all that in-tune either."
Anti-Social Music "Sings The Great American Songbook"
Anti-Social Music is a non-profit collective of composers and performers created for the purpose of presenting new music by emerging, primarily New York-based musicians. No-one in the group is simply a chamber-music lifer or a downtown-jazz snob or a punk-rocker dabbling in the “legit music” world. ASM features members of groups from Balkan Beat Box to Ida to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and can be seen at festivals, clubs, on rooftops, and venues both conventional and urine-stained. And all shows feature artwork and stage design by some of our favorite local artists. "Sings The Great American Songbook" is their debut album, including Franz Nicolay's chamber-orchestra tribute to the homeless composer Moondog.
"Imagine an orchestra wearing formal attire and combat boots, then replace the conductor's baton with a bottle of Jack Daniel's." -Magnet, #1 of 10 Records You Missed in 2005
Guignol "Guignol"
Guignol is a tuba/accordion/clarinet/drums quartet, the raucous, theatrical, spastic and melodramatic soundtrack for singing grifters, murderous marionettes, and grease-painted gutterballs. It's an oom-pah wedding, squealing and lyrical, that hits like punk rockers and sings like a gypsy camp. Led by Peter Hess (Balkan Beat Box, Slavic Soul Party, World/Inferno) and Franz Nicolay, this is their self-titled debut.
World/Inferno Presents: "Vox Inferne"
In 2005, I ran into a guy I knew from a semi-prominent nu-metal label, who'd had some luck with with a sideline in "Brechtian cabaret" and were sniffing about for more low-hanging fruit of the same breed. After a few stiff drinks, he mentioned that they'd had an idea about finding a sort of punk cabaret vocal ensemble.
"Like the Comedian Harmonists?" I said. (Who, by the way, were an a capella-and-piano vocal group in Weimar Germany, whose love of jazz eventually got them in hot water with the Nazis.) "Yeah, exactly." "Huh," I said, "That's funny, Hess, Terricloth, and I have always joked about starting a barbershop quartet." "If you're serious, I'll get you $1500 to make a demo." "Hot diggity!"
Three months and several wine-drenched pitch pipes later, we (the three of us plus Yula and ringers extraordinaire George Wright and Ray Bailey) didn't get to make a full record, but we got to keep the money and the recordings. So from our lips to god's ears, "World/Inferno Presents: Vox Inferne" is a limited-edition (500) colored-vinyl 7" featuring an a capella arrangement of the Inferno classic "Paul Robeson" as well as two never-before-heard songs: "The Devil Boys' Last Hurrah," a nostalgic but firm-hearted remembrance of a gang of doomed New Jersey ne'er-do-wells, and "Istanbul, Drowned Blue Shoes," a true-life tale of domestic revenge.
RIYL: Sacred Harp singing, the Ink Spots, the Comedian Harmonists, Chumbawamba's "English Rebel Songs 1381-1984."'
Guignol & Mischief Brew "Fight Dirty" CD/Cassette
"Fight Dirty" is seven Mischief Brew songs with Guignol as backing band; six Guignol songs with Erik on guitar; a Django Reinhardt cover, and a barn-burning take on Iron Maiden's "Hallowed Be They Name" (with Slavic Soul Party's Ben Holmes on trumpet). This is not a split. It's Guignol & Mischief Brew playing together as a five-piece band. It's apotheosis anthems for the carnies, the travelers, the gypsies, jazzmen, and lowlifes; singing Turkish-flavored reveries, odes to tax evasion, dirty tricks, and mob revolution; cumbia carols, sludge-metal reels, and a funeral march at a flooded bar."
Village Voice
"Brooklyn's Guignol is the best bet for Barbez's crew of hard-working, hard-playing world-music mutants to finally party crash the art-punk party at Death By Audio...it's a crew that truly understands punk rock energy and Eastern Bloc flutter--nailing the rapidfire bluster of Taraf De Haidouks and the one-two-one-two blast of klezmer, Guignol has the speed and energy of your favorite hardcore band...An unrelenting burst that includes the occasional raspy pop song next to their usual annihilating klezmercore."
Punknews
"If you're guessing that this disc is one hell of a ride, go ahead and pat yourself on the back...Guignol and Mischief Brew are no doubt taking punk to places it's never before ventured."
Guignol & Nanuchka "Drink The Best Wine First" EP
Split featuring two World/Inferno sideshows. This is klezmer for Coney Island fire-breathers, sea-shanties for grease-painted gutterballs, and jazz for punk kids that joined the circus. Featuring former Inferno/Star Fucking Hipsters bassist Yula Be'eri's Nanuchka; and Inferno frontman Jack Terricloth duetting on "Captain Sensible Calling."
"...by operating within the realm of centuries-old European traditions and then taking that music into a punk setting, they've created something that sounds at once completely familiar and completely new." - Artnoise
The Bushwick Book Club "Vol. 1: January-November 2009"
The Bushwick Book Club is a songwriter circle in which each month, participating songwriters read the same book, write a song or two about it, and perform them on the first Tuesday at the Brooklyn club Goodbye Blue Monday. "The Bushwick Book Club, Vol. 1" is a 58-song MP3 CD compilation of the first year, including songs by Franz Nicolay, Jeffrey Lewis, Toby Goodshank, Corn Mo, and more.
3 songs by Franz Nicolay
The Debutante Hour "The Birth and Death of Meaning"
Like a gothic Americana Andrew Sisters, The Debutante Hour keeps its musical roots in country, blues and vaudeville while letting their lyrics run the gamut from absurd to sublime. Susan Hwang and Maria Sonevytsky switch fluidly between accordion/keys and hobo drum kit while Mia Pixley holds it down on the cello as the unconventional power trio harmonizes about planning, worldviews and works of literature, with the occasional swerve into a Carpathian mountain stomp. Their debut album was produced by Franz Nicolay.
Complicated Gardening Techniques chapbook:
Franz Nicolay's first collection of stories, Complicated Gardening Techniques is a six-story chapbook released by Julius Singer Press, an independent Brooklyn imprint. It's "real things that happened to me and people I know, fake things that might have happened to people you know; loosely fictionalized and highly stylized with handy tips and pithy epigrams." The first in a series of three chapbooks by Nicolay due on Julius Singer in 2010.
Complicated Gardening Techniques 2: Work-Rest-Play-Die: Essays on Bob Dylan & The Subhumans
Long form analyses and meditations on late-period Bob Dylan as reflected through Adorno and Edward Said; and a career retrospective of punk heroes Subhumans.
Complicated Gardening Techniques 3: Tour Diaries 2007-2009
What it sounds like, including stories about the Hold Steady opening for the Rolling Stones and much more.
Complicated Gardening Techniques 4: The Troubadour And The Patron
A collection of magazine pieces, essays, reviews, and stories about music; including a tale of working as a strolling accordionist at an Italian restaurant in Hoboken and thoughts on musicians as varied as T.V. Smith, Mark Kozelek, and the Carpenters.
