Franz Nicolay

Franz Nicolay calls one tune on his new solo album “I’m Done Singing,” but that’s only because it comes at the end: Though Nicolay’s day job is playing keyboards in the Hold Steady, he’s as word-drunk as that band’s frontman, Craig Finn. “What do I know about love except love songs?” Nicolay asks in “Confessions of an Ineffective Casanova,” mirroring Finn’s metatextual fixation.

Major General is built atop the same sort of bar-band foundation that anchors the Hold Steady, though Nicolay shades his rousing post-Springsteen musings with Gypsy-punk accents presumably inherited from his other gig with World/Inferno Friendship Society (which plays without him at Webster Hall Fri 9). And he’s actually a better balladeer than Finn: The CD’s most memorable cuts—“Note on a Subway Wall,” “X-Games” and “Do We Live in Dreams?”—could be outtakes from the Dracula musical Jason Segel’s character writes in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Franz Nicolay plays (Le) Poisson Rouge Sun 11.