Fred Nicolaus used to be a part of the band called Department Eagles back in 2000. He formed the band with his New York University friend and roommate Daniel Rossen, who now happens to be a member of Grizzly Bear. Nicolaus has decided to take a new direction in his music career and start his project Golden Suits.
On August 20, 2013 he has released his self-titled debut album Golden Suits. This 10-track album is a pure nostalgia in any sense. It is like a photo album full of melancholic and dreamy photographs taken with Diana camera. Each song has a retro feeling to it and it perfectly captures the emotion and a certain moment frozen in time.
The album also draws the inspiration from American literature. Nicolaus has said in an interview with The Rumpus, that his new album was very influenced by John Cheever stories.
“If you start with “I want this to sound like The Smiths,” I know where that goes. But if you start with “I want this to sound like a Cheever story,” you can end up in fun place.”
And boy, I don’t think that anyone ever did so much justice to a novel as Nicolaus did. I highly recommend this album. It makes a perfect studying, chilling in the park or walking around NYC playlist.
Nicolaus has also released a video for his song “Swimming in ’99,” that features him going from bookstore to bookstore in New York City, trying to buy every single copy of “The Stories of John Cheever.” A very interesting approach to the video, that ties very well with the album.
Check it out here! Let me know what you think!
The tracks featured on the album:
1.Swimming In ‘99
2.Under Your Wing
3.I Think You Would Have Been Mine
4.You Can’t Make Your Mind Up
5.Restaurant Song
6.Didn’t I Warn You
7.Wash It Away
8.Find a Way
9.Little One
10.Dearly Beloved
Fun facts: A follower asked Nicolaus on Tumblr, where are the two watches on the cover coming from and are they significant in any way?
This is what he had to say:
I bought the gold watch on my 27th birthday at a junk shop on the Upper East Side. It’s not super significant, but I enjoy the place (piles and piles of watches, broken lamps, classical music, a squawking parakeet) and would often go there on lunch breaks from my job. The owner is an elf-like old man who constantly tries to cheat his customers in a way that’s kind of charming.
I bought the leather watch at the gift shop of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche in Berlin, a little after I turned 28. My grandmother went there when she was young - through her involvement with the church she met my grandfather, who was studying to be a pastor. The watch actually has a little piece of the gilding from the ceiling of the church embedded in the face. Kind of a hokey tourist thing, but I like the fact that this little piece of gold was somewhere up above my grandmother’s head in the 1920s.