Mike Nicolai

Track Listing: Tarot’s Road/ The Depths Of Love/ Post Atom Age/ Lifesucker Waltz/ One Second Ago/ Mass Blues/ Silly Putty/ House Of Ears/ Snakes/ Son Of Erotics/ It’s Your Blue, Swing It

Personnel: Mike Nicolai: guitar, vocals, keyboards/ John Jerry: drums/ Nancy Bender: accordion.

With a couple of true-blue, local indie labels like Eclectone (Martin Devaney) and SMA (Rich Mattson, who recorded and mixed the bulk of this material), and board-meister Tom Herbers (who recorded and mixed one track here, as well as mastering the finished project) behind him, ya gotta figure musician-about-town Mike Nicolai’s albums are probably at least worth a spin. And boy, would you be right. God Fatigue In The Post Atom Age, an alternately dreamy, skittering collection of post-modern folk/rock ballads, driving, humor-inflected barn-burners, snippets of home-spun, back-porch wisdom and soulful, in-the-moment ruminations, brings to the fore the best in Nicolai’s sharp, memorable songwriting and musical talents.

He kicks off the opening cut, “Tarot’s Road,” with a brief spoken-word intro, one that just might accurately encapsulate the man’s music, lyrics, style and personal philosophy: “Some folks live their lives by the roll of the dice, some folks decide by makin’ plans, and some folks chart their course by the cards in their hands. And some folks, well, deny, deny ...” Light acoustic strumming then fades up to bolster his smooth, easy-ridin’ pipes and no-bullshit lines: “She didn’t have no doors to walk out through/ She didn’t have no chords to sing hallelujah/ She didn’t have no more questions/ She skipped down the Tarot’s Road, uncertain, it was narrow/ It was fast as an arrow ...

“In The Depths Of Love” is a bouncy, piano-driven tale of life, love and heartbreak, driven by a catchy refrain and the damning lines, “Down in the depths of love/ You can go crazy, there is the smell of blood/ Down in the depths of love ...” The title cut is a pounding, shimmy-ing psycho-surf inflected romp, Nicolai intoning lyrical laments like “Oh, hell’s bells, the end’s coming soon/ What happened to the life that was in this room?/ Somebody dropped the Big One ...”

“The Lifesucker Waltz” is a vitriolic blast at organized religion and the Catholic Church in particular. Here Nicolai shows no mercy for the subject at hand: “Well, the Pope died today/ I don’t guess I care/ He was just a man full of shit, blood, and water/ And the appointed leader of a sham institution/ That frowns on a lot of my friends ...” He goes on to drive the blade home with an almost palpable, wicked grin, “... and aspiring to love means nothing compared to the proven cash value of ritual slaughter/ And futures of people fucking each other out of health, out of home, out of whatever/ They’ll push you over and make it look like a fall/ And they’ll dance the lifesucker waltz...”

Frankly, there’s simply not a track here that I didn’t enjoy, grin to, mull over, dissect or want to hear a hundred more times. But for all the recording genius, the mixing prowess and the board wizardry here, I’m still left feeling fondest of the lo-fi, bedroom recording of “Snakes.” Sounding half a world and half a century away, Nicolai moans softly over strummed acoustic guitar: “You put your hands into the road/ You’ll think that maybe you can stop the cars/ You’ll walk around in the nude and take a shit in your backyard ... and snakes eat apes, and apes will eat cows, and cows will eat clouds, and clouds are COOL ...” Dreamy, insightful, thought-provoking home-cooked American music that stands heads above anything in its realm. Highly recommended. Check Mike an’ loads of other great local artists out at EclectoneRecords.com.

Erik Brandt
Green Eyed Alone
2006
Mercy Recordings

Let’s play a little word association game, shall we? I’ll play this CD track by track, and spit out the first words, phrases or thoughts that come to my mind. Here we go: “Tanz den Dobberstein”: VAN CLIBURN ON XANAX. “Shooting Star”: Appropriated hillbilly chic. “Just One More Time”: Michael Martin Murphy, dude ranch, broken collarbone. “The House On The Hill”: MUDSLIDES. “Thousand Heartaches”: Lon Cheney, dusty church pews, rumbling bellies, baby wipes. “Green Eyed Alone”: Impotent dog-catcher, dry alcoholics, crab cakes. “Snow In Langenfeld”: My grandmother’s fervent desire for me to be a tap-dancing evangelist with a weekly, recurring role on the Lawrence Welk show. Tiny, tiny, tiny bubbles filled with cyanide floating through a war-ravaged Berlin bunker. “Dent”: Pepto-Bismol. Old yellow dentures in a glass of stale water. Power outages. “Rain”: Uncle Bill’s fatal auto accident in 1964. Used horse feed bags filled with empty Mr. Pibb cans. Flea powder. Rashes. Box lunches in bed. “1-4-5”: Angel Martin from “The Rockford Files.” Bib overalls. A guy who comes in your house and stares you up and down and says, “Ah dun’ lak yew,” then abruptly leaves. “Obsolesence”: Words my computer spell-check does not recognize. Chipped beef on toast. Monkey hair. “Apostrophe”: Frank Zappa. Not the song, just the title. How dare anyone ever use that title seriously without not being very, very serious about not being very serious? I mean, seriously! “The End”: Finally, I understand why the label is called “Mercy!” THE END IS MERCY!! Thank you, Jebus. Thank you, India. Thank you, green tea. Hobble this horse, o Lord, and end the pain.

That’s it for this time out, folks. Tune in again next time out for more spewing, spittin’ and stutterin’. Til we meet again—make yer own damn news.

If you have music gigs/events/CDs you’d like to see mentioned in this space, or you’d just like to receive a free translation booklet for my next column via snail mail, send replies to: Tmygunn777@peoplepc.com. ||