Do the Struggle

"Never trust a man without a horror story!," Franz Nicolay enthusiastically belts on the chorus of "The Hearts of Boston," the first track on his third album of solo material, Do the Struggle. With more years under his wheels as a touring musician than most, Nicolay has done time as an auxiliary player in the Hold Steady, Against Me!, World/Inferno Friendship Society, and countless others, and over the course of Do the Struggle's ten story-songs, he shares some of the horror stories he's amassed, recounting relationship sagas, travelogues, and stories from the long and dingy road. Production from experimental hip-hop troupe Dälek's Oktopus adds a strange undercurrent of dark digital glossiness to Nicolay's heartstruck Americana-leaning songs, but often builds to the point of over-production, as on the title track, which begins with an overly busy guitar riff and grows even more overwhelming with maximized orchestration and unnecessary electronic textures. More often than not, it's Nicolay's verbose mile-a-minute lyrics that overwhelm the songs, rolling along emphatically, quickly losing the line between picturesque imagery and manic ranting. Sometimes he avoids the urge to lay everything on the line at once, as with the more direct "Did Your Broken Heart Make You Who You Are" and the bluegrass-tinged "You Don't Know I'm Here." The gentle ballad "Take No Prisoners" is another standout, with lead vocals from Emilyn Brodsky offering a breather from Nicolay's sometimes overambitious tales. Taking some of the more brash elements from bands he's worked with, Do the Struggle finds Nicolay melding some of the fiery gusto of Against Me! or his Balkan jazz group Guignol with elements of the Hold Steady's dive-bar dirges and sung-spoken fables of sour-hearted debauchery and the fool's quest for something better. Ultimately, though, he throws too much at the listener at once for anything to stick, musically, lyrically, and emotionally. The constant flow of contrasting images matched with busy production leaves a very spirited but still blurry impression of what exactly he's trying to say.
© Fred Thomas /TiVo