a balladeer

With this title, and tunes such as “Superman Can’t Move His Legs”, “Jesus Doesn’t Love Me,” and “Dead As Disco”, this Dutch band’s second LP is a crafted, warm pop album consumed with US culture. For instance, Woods, girl-next-door blonde star of 1978 porn hit Debbie Does Dallas, did disappear off cultural radars after her four adult films, her rumored drug OD death unconfirmed. (Even the directors of the 2005 British TV documentary Debbie Does Dallas Uncovered couldn’t find her.)

Lead-Balladeer Marinus De Goederen uses her mysterious evaporation as emblem of the darker/naughtier/corrupt side of American cultural hegemony, felt acutely abroad, as songs about sin city Vegas, Jackie Kennedy, California, Dean Martin and Marilyn Monroe, the 1998 Laramie beating death of gay U. of Wyoming student Matthew Wayne Shepard, and 1984 slasher film ‘A Nightmare of Elm Street’ blend brooding, pianocentric Euro-pop. - The Big Takeover Issue No. 68 by Jack Rabid, 2011