Golden Suits is the solo project of Fred Nicolaus of the band Department of Eagles. The project was inspired by a strange year that saw him get chased out of an apartment by a rat infestation, go through a painful breakup, travel to Germany to learn about his grandfather's death in WWII, go broke, and lose forty pounds. Throughout that chaotic time, he became obsessed with a book of short stories by the fiction writer John Cheever, and started writing songs that blended his own experiences with fragments from the book (the name "Golden Suits" is a reference to the final line of a Cheever story). The result is a collection of ten songs that combine nostalgia, sentimentality, skewed references to a book about suburban marriage in the 1950s, personal confessions and abstract non-sequitors that take a shot at the sublime. The songs follow the thread of Department of Eagles’ swervy take on classic pop in the vein of Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, Paul Simon, and Lennon and McCartney solo. Nicolaus, who generally wrote the simpler, poppier material in Department of Eagles, followed the mold of “take a straightforward, direct song and play with it until there’s something interesting going on.” Working outside of the band was a chance to indulge in production ideas that wouldn’t have flown within it. His debut self-titled LP was released August 20, 2013 on Yep Roc Records.
