The Humorless Ladies of Border Control: Touring the Punk Underground from Belgrade to Ulaanbaatar

Musician Nicolay, formerly in the Hold Steady, the World/Inferno Friendship Society, and Guignol, details three separate tours through Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Russia, Ukraine, and Mongolia between 2012 and 2014. Each tour is laid out in its own section and relates the author's travel woes, introduces various colorful fans and promoters, and describes his field trips around the gigs. In the first section, he travels with his wife, Maria. Part two focuses on a solo tour prior to the birth of his daughter. Part three follows Nicolay, Maria, and their one-year-old daughter on a visit to Ukraine in 2014. He combines travel narrative with punk history as well as political musings to form a less personal, more idea-driven portrait of the region and musical following. Occasionally, the diverse themes require lengthy writing that fails to form a cohesive whole, coming off as uneven and unfocused. The tour locations tend to resemble one another, and the narrative takes on a repetitive quality. Mention of intriguing cultural details such as "girl watering" in Szeged are merely that, mentions, rather than experiences that could have been probed further. The idea of an American musician being so popular abroad is certainly intriguing, and Nicolay captures some of that fascination well here.