Record Review, Nikolai Fraiture

Artist: Nikolai Fraiture
Source: Paul Murphy

Boredom can be a terrible thing for a musician, particularly one who has already spent time in the lime light and sold millions of albums. Nikolai Fraiture, bassist with The Strokes delved deep into his shoebox of memories, as his band's hiatus (due to end in Feb '09) began taking longer than expected. Finding rants and poems, written years ago, Nikolai set out to add to them music and melody. Following the footsteps of fellow Strokes members Nikolai created a side project, called Nickel Eye, and has compiled his memories into a debut solo album called The Time of the Assassins.

Musically inspired by the likes of Neil Young, Frank Black, Leonard Cohen and the Kinks, Nickel Eye fuses indie, folk and post-punk monotony into 11 tracks that certainly have the lyrical simplicity of the Kinks' "Apeman" but lacks the honesty of Neil Young and the charisma of Leonard Cohen and Frank Black.

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