about KARAOKE PARKMAN BLUES,
the new album by the BINGO TRAPPERS
The Ramones once rejoiced the world with the song ‘Something to Believe in’, which is, curiously enough (?) about the absence of something to believe in. Long before that Roxy Music had a photograph of a siren – a famous model washed upon the shore – on the cover of their same titled album.
So what’s the connection between those two? Well, here’s the catch: the siren in ‘Please, Will You Believe Me’, the last song of Karaoke Parkman Blues, begs to be believed and taken for real… Just as the infamous karaoke parkman himself, a guy in slacks and sneakers, with a smartphone and big headphones, strolling in the park and singing Beatles-songs so loudly (out of context and sometimes even out of tune…) that it echoes through the neighborhood. A siren in his own way. So, we hope you’ll believe in this new batch of Bingo Trappers-songs and take them for real…
They’re about dates who are carrying drama-writing-books, packs of stray dogs as a sign of the times, and choppers in the sky. Also about philosophers like Plato and Mark E. Smith and the offspring of Marvel-superheroes… And a gender-fluid pear (like in the fruit)… Dancing in the desert. Well, whatever.
The Amsterdam based Bingo Trappers are the moniker of songwriter and singer Waldemar Noë and multi-instrumentalist Wim Elzinga, who also makes the arrangements and recordings of their prolific oeuvre, which starts out in 1995 with the cassette More/Soul on the legendary Shrimper-label. They’ve been active ever since, Rolling Stone mentions them as special pick with their cd-only release Juanita Ave. in 2001, and in the last decade they’re on a steady vinyl-streak with the albums Sister Planet (’13), Elizabethan (‘18) and ‘Giddy Wishes (’20) (for the complete discography, see their Bandcamp-page).
Their music is tasty enough to dub it a delicious stew of sixties-twangs, bluesy strums, luring slide-guitars or pedal-steels, warm vocals and tickling choirs.
Please enjoy.
This is a corelease with Grapefruit Records, Microwave Records and No Aloha.
Listen to ”Karaoke Parkman Blues” here.
