Uploaded October 2013 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Golden Suit's "Dearly Beloved" set to images from Ingmar Bergman's "From the Life of The Marionettes"-
Golden Suits debut album of the same name is a wonderful piece of storytelling. Fred Nicolaus of the band Department of Eagles solo project are songs inspired by a tumultuous year where he was basically chased out of his apartment by a severe rat infestation, lost 40 lbs, just about went broke and embarked on a trip to Germany with his father. His songs feel like intimate stories and are so well rendered. Every song is stellar but I was particularly taken away with Dearly Beloved.
Built around a lovely staccato guitar progression, it ebbs and flows with a wonderfully cinematic tone so much so that I felt the need to pair it up with the prolog and epilog of Ingmar Bergman's 1980 film "From The Life of the Marionettes"-- the song and images (shot by the amazing cinematographer Sven Nykvist) are opposites really which make for an oddly captivating pairing.
-Robb Donker
americanpancake.com
Sounds and images owned by their respective copyright holders.
Images from Bavaria Film ITC
Sounds- owned by Golden Suits -
From the Life Of the Marionettes:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Life_of_the_Marionettes
Wikipedia: From the Life of the Marionettes (German: Aus dem Leben der Marionetten) is a 1980 film directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film was produced in West Germany with a German language screenplay and soundtrack while Bergman was in "tax exile" from his native Sweden. It is filmed in black and white apart from two colour sequences at the beginning and end of the movie. It is set in Munich. The title is a quotation excerpted from a passage in The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi:
"Most unfortunately in the lives of the Marionettes there is always a BUT that spoils everything".
The film charts the disintegration of the relationship of Katarina and Peter Egermann, the feuding couple seen briefly in Bergman's earlier Scenes From a Marriage. As Katarina seeks other lovers, the emotionally repressed and despondent Peter descends into neuroses, eventually leading him to tearfully murder a prostitute (played by Rita Russek), with the same name as his wife, at a Munich peep show before sodomising her dead body. In the closing sequence he is incarcerated in a mental asylum. An odd counterpoint to the depressing tone of the film is the sprightly disco soundtrack over the end credits.
Golden Suits Press info:
Golden Suits is Fred Nicolaus of the band Department of Eagles. He wrote or co-wrote with Daniel Rossen many of the group's best known songs, including "No One Does it Like You," "Teenagers," "While We're Young," and "Herringbone." Their last album, In Ear Park, was awarded 'Best New Music by Pitchfork and made The New York Times' year-end top ten list.
Golden Suits is Nicolaus' first project working alone. It 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.
Musically, 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 DoE, 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, like the Graceland-inspired one-two beat and female vocals on "Swimming in '99″ or the unadorned piano ballad feel for "Restaurant Song."
Throughout the recording process, Nicolaus played most of the instruments, but had help from a talented group of friends including Chris Bear and Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear; Fraser McCulloch from Milagres (who engineered the album); Becca Kauffman and Felicia Douglass from Ava Luna; Kris Nolte and Ian Davis from Mason Jar Music (who arranged strings); and Daniel Rossen (who sang harmonies and was an all-around supportive spirit). All in all, the album took about two years of writing and recording in several studios and psuedo-studios in Brooklyn to finish.
goldensuits.com
Please visit us at americanpancake.com
and LIKE us on Facebook - facebook.com/pages/American-Pancake/197162663627422
Golden Suit's "Dearly Beloved" set to images from Ingmar Bergman's "From the Life of The Marionettes"-
Golden Suits debut album of the same name is a wonderful piece of storytelling. Fred Nicolaus of the band Department of Eagles solo project are songs inspired by a tumultuous year where he was basically chased out of his apartment by a severe rat infestation, lost 40 lbs, just about went broke and embarked on a trip to Germany with his father. His songs feel like intimate stories and are so well rendered. Every song is stellar but I was particularly taken away with Dearly Beloved.
Built around a lovely staccato guitar progression, it ebbs and flows with a wonderfully cinematic tone so much so that I felt the need to pair it up with the prolog and epilog of Ingmar Bergman's 1980 film "From The Life of the Marionettes"-- the song and images (shot by the amazing cinematographer Sven Nykvist) are opposites really which make for an oddly captivating pairing.
-Robb Donker
americanpancake.com
Sounds and images owned by their respective copyright holders.
Images from Bavaria Film ITC
Sounds- owned by Golden Suits -
From the Life Of the Marionettes:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_the_Life_of_the_Marionettes
Wikipedia: From the Life of the Marionettes (German: Aus dem Leben der Marionetten) is a 1980 film directed by Ingmar Bergman. The film was produced in West Germany with a German language screenplay and soundtrack while Bergman was in "tax exile" from his native Sweden. It is filmed in black and white apart from two colour sequences at the beginning and end of the movie. It is set in Munich. The title is a quotation excerpted from a passage in The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi:
"Most unfortunately in the lives of the Marionettes there is always a BUT that spoils everything".
The film charts the disintegration of the relationship of Katarina and Peter Egermann, the feuding couple seen briefly in Bergman's earlier Scenes From a Marriage. As Katarina seeks other lovers, the emotionally repressed and despondent Peter descends into neuroses, eventually leading him to tearfully murder a prostitute (played by Rita Russek), with the same name as his wife, at a Munich peep show before sodomising her dead body. In the closing sequence he is incarcerated in a mental asylum. An odd counterpoint to the depressing tone of the film is the sprightly disco soundtrack over the end credits.
Golden Suits Press info:
Golden Suits is Fred Nicolaus of the band Department of Eagles. He wrote or co-wrote with Daniel Rossen many of the group's best known songs, including "No One Does it Like You," "Teenagers," "While We're Young," and "Herringbone." Their last album, In Ear Park, was awarded 'Best New Music by Pitchfork and made The New York Times' year-end top ten list.
Golden Suits is Nicolaus' first project working alone. It 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.
Musically, 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 DoE, 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, like the Graceland-inspired one-two beat and female vocals on "Swimming in '99″ or the unadorned piano ballad feel for "Restaurant Song."
Throughout the recording process, Nicolaus played most of the instruments, but had help from a talented group of friends including Chris Bear and Chris Taylor from Grizzly Bear; Fraser McCulloch from Milagres (who engineered the album); Becca Kauffman and Felicia Douglass from Ava Luna; Kris Nolte and Ian Davis from Mason Jar Music (who arranged strings); and Daniel Rossen (who sang harmonies and was an all-around supportive spirit). All in all, the album took about two years of writing and recording in several studios and psuedo-studios in Brooklyn to finish.
goldensuits.com
Please visit us at americanpancake.com
and LIKE us on Facebook - facebook.com/pages/American-Pancake/197162663627422
