It's fascinating to look back at the members of the Strokes now because of how every post-Strokes venture so perfectly encapsulates each member's role in the group. Albert Hammond Jr., the guitar-hook savant, Fabrizio Moretti, the champ of smooth rhythms, Nick Valensi, the musician by default and Julian Casablancas, the pure swagger. Unfortunately, with the debut of his side project, Nickel Eye, and first LP, The Time of the Assassins, Nikolai Fraiture has further affirmed himself as the boring guy in back.
Assassins is mostly composed of Fraiture's arrangements over poetry he wrote as a teenager. It's appropriate, then, that the songs come off sounding a bit amateur. Back from Exile,"" for one, sounds like a bad joke. The instrumentation is - as is the norm on the album - uneventful, and his angst fails to shine through his nasally, monotone vocals.
No actual emotions ever manage to break through his dull delivery. This is a man who spent his entire tenure with the Strokes camped out, motionless in the back of the stage. In that way, The Time of the Assassins is about what we should expect.
Musically, Assassins rarely strays from basic guitar chords covering a slick bass groove - a combination more frequently heard in a high school battle of the bands. The one departure is ""Brandy of the Damned,"" a reggae trudge that's more of a Clash rip-off than a Marley attempt.
However, in no way should that define Fraiture as a poor musician. In fact, the best part of any of these songs comes in the first seconds, when his riffs get first exposure. He has an incredible knack for melody, but it's like a nice sports car: as nice as it looks, one can only sit and stare for so long.
The reassuring element of The Time of the Assassins is its humility. Fraiture's not trying to pass this off as gold. It might be his meekness that makes Assassins so plodding, but it's this same mentality that brought him success earlier in his career. He's not capable of carrying an album by himself, and in the Strokes, he doesn't need to.
With a rumored reunion looming in February, though, the individual pieces of the Strokes don't need to worry about record sales, but rather about correcting the plentiful mistakes of 2006's First Impressions of Earth. Although he might have succeeded in preparing himself for that, Fraiture seems to concede Assassins is a defeat. ""Please don't listen to me,"" he grumbles on ""You and Everyone Else,"" as if anticipating our response: ""No problem.
