CHRIS TRAPPER SOLO ALBUM REVIEWS

BUFFALO NEWS
December 12, 2007
Jeff Miers

Buffalo native and erstwhile leader of the Push Stars Chris Trapper gives us a full album’s worth of self-penned Christmas tunes with “It’s Christmas Time” (Starlit Records), and it’s a laid-back beauty. With sparse accompaniment — mostly acoustic guitar, some nice lap steel, upright bass and smartly arranged horns — the record sounds instantly familiar and inviting, and celebrates the sadly undervalued beauty of Trapper’s voice. It’s another new Christmas classic, then.

BOSTON HERALD
December 7, 2007
Larry Katz

Christmas music is back.

OK, it never really went away. As inevitable as an Amy Winehouse meltdown, every fall a blizzard of Christmas CDs arrive. This I know all too well, because every fall I wade through a hundred or so of these seasonal offerings in search of holiday goodies.

But last year’s search for worthy Christmas sounds ended in utter frustration. 2006 rated as absolutely the worst year for Yule music ever - or at least since the dawn of the compact disc.

So I bring glad tidings. Christmas music roars back in 2007 with a sleighful of worthy releases to lively up your December.

Best original songs: Chris Trapper, “It’s Christmas Time.” This isn’t merely the best by a Boston singer/songwriter, it’s the year’s best set of new Christmas tunes, period. Simple arrangements and instrumentation (featuring banjo, ukulele, lap steel and the like) accentuate Push Star Trapper’s charm and sincerity as he captures real-life holiday feelings. Runner-up: Over the Rhine,
“Snow Angels.” Female-fronted Cincinnati band’s somber Noel reflections.

CHRIS TRAPPER HEY YOU STARLIT RECORDS
November 2007
Andrew Ellis
www.ink19.com

Chris Trapper’s Hey You has been out for nearly a year but such a special album deserves some retrospective praise.

The former Push Stars singer-songwriter has released two previous solo albums, but Hey You is probably the pick of his entire back catalogue -- and that’s saying something for a writer and performer as prolific as Trapper.

A brief spell on Capitol apart, Trapper has spent the majority of his eight-album recording career on the indie periphery, but it’s a situation that clearly suits him. This freedom affords him the ability to release records containing such diverse gems as the quirky “Say It Loud,” the beautiful Celtic-tinged “In From The Outside” and the Latin-flavored “Tear Choked Eye.”

The sparse, gentle acoustics of “Everytime I See You” and the philosophical “35th Birthday” show Trapper at his understated, evocative best, while haunting opener “Feelings Without Weight” demonstrates a modern, melodic edge to his songwriting.

Despite the diverse nature of the songs, Hey You has a sense of unity that ties all the songs together: namely, Chris Trapper’s remarkable talent. His career may perhaps be best summed up by the lyric “Why am I always inside out/ Caught in the corners of the crowd?”, but I urge you to discover his music for yourself.

CHRIS TRAPPER, "HEY YOU!" (STARLIT RECORDS, 2006)
Par Winberg
www.melodic.net

Chris Trapper from The Push Stars is out on a solo adventure and that with a good result. Chris sits on a very nice voice and the album is a very personal and clever singer songwriter popalbum. Imagine yourself a 15 year younger Elvis Costello with a poppier edge mixed the classic modern "singer songwriter sound from Aware". Just listen to a song like "Say It Loud" at his MySpace site and you'll get the grip and probably buy your own copy. This CD is close to a four if it wasn't for a FEW quite boring tracks. But they're few and the main part is as I wrote really good. Check him out today folks.

ST. LOUIS RIVERFRONT TIMES
February 7, 2007

Chris Trapper has the unfortunate luck of coming to town the very same night as the way-sold-out Shins show — which means that the Boston singer-songwriter might not have the audience he deserves for his richly detailed tunes. A mainstay of the Beantown music scene for more than a decade as the leader of heartfelt rockers the Push Stars, Trapper the solo artist is an equally thoughtful troubadour who addresses the weightier side of life. That's no more evident than on last year's Hey, You, a solid collection of songs about hard-luck loners and sad-eyed romantics. Trapper's vocals most often resemble the wrinkled tenor of Counting Crows' Adam Duritz (sans whining), but his voice is a honeyed match for Hey's slick, rootsy college-rock and acoustic folk-twang — music inspired by and courtesy of guests such as Great Big Sea, Martin Sexton and Trapper's Push Stars bandmates.

INSITE ATLANTA
February 2007

For the past 10 years, Chris Trapper has been valiantly leading Boston's
criminally underrated Push Stars, the alt rockers who perfected power pop on
1999's After the Party.  Though they flirted with national success thanks to
a spot on the There's Something About Mary soundtrack and a brief stay with
Capitol, but were ultimately shown the door after failing to make the label
millions.

In the years since, the band has continued to churn out records and Trapper
has vacillated between fronting a remarkable rock band and putting in time
as an equally remarkable solo artist.  On Hey You, his third solo disc, the
songs are still rooted in a satisfying pop foundation, but Trapper tends to
gamble more on experimentation bringing in steel guitars, accordions,
whistles and horns.

The result is just as strong as anything Trapper has turned in before and
likely to impress anyone who has ever owned a Cheap Trick or Big Star
record.

PERFORMING SONGWRITER
December 2006
Mare Wakefield

“You think I think too much of myself / And I think you’ve been seeing someone else.” So begins “All Time Favorite,” a peppy swing tune by Push Stars frontman Chris Trapper. He goes on to accuse his shifty sweetie of working out, dressing up and “leaving too much lipstick on your cup.” Banjo, trombone and saloon-style piano bob happily along as Trapper contemplates his supposed betrayal.

Trapper leaves the Push Stars’ pop-rock stylings behind to explore a jazzier sound on Gone Again. Backed by Boston’s Wolverine Jazz Band, Trapper sings of week-long trips on tourist ships and girls crazy for Frank Sinatra. The record exudes a comfy lounge feel with expert arrangement incorporating tubas, guitars and lap steel. We know Trapper’s tasted success before, and our guess is that it won’t be long before he’s singled out on the singer-songwriter circuit as well.

WASHINGTON POST
May 5, 2006
Pamela Murray Winters

The way Chris Trapper tells it, he was feeling jaded and uninspired when he ran across an old jazz cassette and hatched a plan to record with some Dixieland-style musicians.  The result suggests that he has overcome his creative block. “Gone Again” sets the strut and embellishments of the Wolverine Jazz Band’s Boston–area musicians who, as Trapper says in his liner notes, “play a lost art” to Trapper’s own droll songs.  He’s a fellow who declares to a lover: “Don’t need caviar and wine / Burger King will be just fine.”

Ignoring the cheeky, postmodern swing resurgence of the 1990s, Trapper, of The Push Stars, sounds like the 21st-century young popster he is. The dark humor of songs such as “Nowhere,” a tale of a groom’s night out gone wrong, makes for a perfect bridge between Trapper’s modern sensibilities and the sunny-side optimism of horns, piano, banjo, and percussion.  And “Boston Girl” connects last century’s patter and talking blues with hip–hop rhyming: Only the jitterbug rhythm and Tijuana Brass-sounding chorus make the difference.

Just for good measure, Trapper throws in a few quiet, contemplative numbers such as the sweet lap-steel-washed “Jukebox Lights.”   

CHRIS TRAPPER - GONE AGAIN
Jeff Imbaro
www.bostonbeats.com

Some albums manage to be more than music, more than song or sound. If
you catch it right, and if you're open to it, they are windows into
moments, and invitations to truth. No great Truth, mind you, other than
what it feels like to be on the road, or sitting in your backyard on a
warm day, or in love. Some albums are something more. Chris Trapper's
Gone Again is such an album. This project finds the Push Stars front
man joining the Wolverine Jazz Band, and is filled with a variety of
clarinet counter-melodies and tuba bass-lines. Without exception, the
songs work. When combined with Trapper's expert songwriting and easy
voice, the result is like nothing else you've heard, and yet is like
everything you already love. Some songs bring to mind Cake or the
Squirrel Nut Zippers, others Jack Johnson, John Mayer or Toad the Wet
Sprocket. Listeners of a slightly earlier generation will recall Marc
Cohn, David Wilcox, the Counting Crows or even Tom Waits. The point is
that although Gone Again is completely unique and original, it's not so
original or unusual that you won't find yourself playing it over and
over.

The number of incredible songs on Gone Again is almost as many as
there are tracks, but some deserve special mention. The album opens
with a sweet rolling gem called "All Time Favorite," which will put a
smile on your face every time it sings from your stereo. "Nowhere" is a
dirty old postcard, lost and pleading, dramatic and imperative. A
proclaiming trumpet punctuates the story, and calls to mind a back
alley somewhere in Tijuana. "Away We Go" brings us to a coconut island
of tropical simplicity, a lazy love affair in the sun, which then
transitions into the upbeat "Boston Girl." This song taps along at
exactly the pace of highway stripes running under the wheels of a car
on the highway, cleverly complimenting the women of Boston by
describing the kinds of women they are not. Then again Trapper manages
to be romantic yet masculine, in the perfect "Dinner and Dream."
Whispering and beautiful, this song is perhaps the finest on the album.

There is still great music being made. You just have to go out and
find it. Bring it into your life and you will be rewarded. Chris
Trapper's Gone Again has a place in your collection, and never far from
your CD player.  

PULSE OF THE TWIN CITIES
November 23, 2005

Chris Trapper's new disc Gone Again came to me as a welcome treat this past week, featuring as it does the New Orleans-esque stylings of the Wolverine Jazz Band. Trapper's pop leanings, which are so boldly in the forefront in his usual outfit, the Push-Stars, are here couched in the sensitive and swinging accompaniment of banjo, tuba, clarinet, trumpet and trombone. A lot of front men who choose to go native in the trad jazz world hew to covers, but Trapper admirably sticks to his original guns here by composing all the tracks. Opener "All Time Favorite" is a standout, draping a sad-sack tale of infidelity in velvety curtains and clever wordplay like, "You're out busy planning your escape/and I'm a superhero with no cape." It's a sharp contrast to the woe-is-me vibe that pervades a lot of indie-rock nowadays (a lot of which I like), and a good reminder that the point of a lot of early jazz and blues wasn't wallowing in misery, but dancing your sorrows away.


CITY NEWSPAPER
Rochester, NY
Frank DeBlase

Chris Trapper's new CD Gone Again has the Boston-based singer-songwriter sounding like a New England Yankee in Leon Redbone's court -- or perhaps Dylan in Dixieland. As frontman for The Pushstars and as a solo artist, Trapper has long proven himself a powerful, insightful songwriter. But this new album has Trapper waking up in a jazzy dream thanks to The Wolverine Jazz Band. This is the coolest thing he has ever done. Trapper and the band each manage to maintain their own identities --- the thoughtful songwriter and a classic jazz band full of swing and joy. Neither has to augment or sacrifice. It's simply Trapper's patented pop style played with a jazz band. And it totally works. The lazy, hazy Tin Pan shuffles give a new perch for his lyrics that in turn
allow the jazz to grow and sashay outside the Alley.


CHRIS TRAPPER "SONGS FROM THE DRIVE-IN" STARLIT RECORDS
By Nick A. Zaino III
Boston Phoenix.com
October 17, 2002

As the frontman for the Boston pop group the Push Stars, Chris Trapper displayed his talent for making radio-friendly music that treads the line between Top 40 rock and grassroots folk. But beneath the sunny melodic surface, there has always been a darker side to his songwriting. And on his first solo effort, Songs from the Drive-In, he indulges that side. The result is a much more personal-sounding collection of songs - a throwback to his days as a lone folkie on the Boston scene. Trapper spins small-town tales of death, joy, and remembrance in stripped-down, mostly acoustic arrangements that put the focus on his formidable storytelling talents. As in true folk music, the charm is in the details. Lovers draw "fingerpaint hearts" on their car windows at the drive-in; the sound of a neighborhood kid struggling to play his clarinet drifts out into the street; a young would-be hero dies in a car race over a $20 bet. By the time Songs from the Drive-In is over, Trapper's imagination has spawned a whole town full of people living, breathing, and dying.

PRESS QUOTES

"Trapper could write a song about early 20th century import/export
regulations and have you singing along by the chorus. The Push Stars
frontman has just released his third solo record, and it's clear his
penchant for pop hooks remains unshaken. With a little help from friends
including Great Big Sea and Martin Sexton, as well as a couple of
additional Push Stars, "Hey, You" exposes fans to some Celtic sounds and
even an Afro-Cuban groove to go with Trapper's wistful jangly pop." - Boston Herald

"This guy has it - "it" being that blend of talent and "otherness" that can take a simple rock song out of the area of the pedestrian and into the ether of the sublime." - Buffalo News

"Chris Trapper plays the role of a hopeless loser to perfection on his latest release "Hey, You."  Proclaiming the restlessness of a life lived going in circles, Trapper articulates the frustrations of a dead-end road with first person accounts of school bullies, belittling bosses and failed relationships. The beauty in the misery, however, is Trapper's ability to tell the stories with humor and melody.”  - Charleston Post and Courier

"Hey,You" examines the loneliness that we all sometimes feel. Trapper conjures up such strong imagery of lives slowly dying that you can feel the choking heat and taste the dust from the streets. And Trapper is not afraid to cross musical boundaries and experiment with different sounds.” - Binghamton Press and Sun Bulletin

"He has a wonderful gift for communicating wounded optimism, both through
his lyrics and his smooth-yet-wobbly vocals, and is tremendously skilled at
blending shiny mainstream pop with New England folk. This time around,
Trapper uses the Wolverine Jazz Band to not only flesh out his sound, but
take it in a new direction. The result is something like Dixieland folk,
which isn't as strange as you might think - matter of fact, it's often (like
on the opener, "All Time Favorite") downright wonderful." - Jefitoblog

"Undergoing an extreme musical makeover from lead singer of the respected
pop-rock sensation The Push Stars to an independent solo artist,
Boston-based, Buffalo-born musician Chris Trapper has recently released Gone
Again (Starlit Records). The album blends the songwriter's acoustic
abilities with his love for jazz. Joining the songwriter is The Wolverine
Jazz Band, who help give shape to Trapper's otherwise clean-cut sonic
landscape with such instruments as the banjo, trumpet, and trombone."
- Buffalo Art Voice

"...the just-released "Gone Again" is a brave, ambitious departure for the songwriter. Working with Boston's noted trad/Dixieland jazz ensemble the Wolverine Jazz Band, Trapper sets his vivid, deeply melodic songs against a backdrop that rather poignantly evokes images of New Orleans. It's stirring stuff and reveals Trapper to be an artist still forging into new territory."
- Buffalo News

"...mix of nostalgia-dosed requiems for old lovers, older towns, and pledge-pin romance, all wrapped in a package of cascading choruses and soaring melodies. It's the sentimental stuff of prom dates and wedding receptions, with the occasional Sunday hangover thrown in to keep it all from getting too WB Network-cute." - Boston Phoenix

"Another brilliant album, the songs here are written so poetically, and abstractly - it's nearly impossible not to be intrigued." - DiscoveringArtists.com

"Luckily for us, Trapper's therapeutic output results in the kind of infectiously melodic pop that is far too rare these days. His lyrics range from the pensively melancholy to the goofily ecstatic, but the tone and sound of the Push Stars music is relentlessly vibrant, reveling in sheer joy." - Patriot Ledger

"...new songs seemed to fit right in, maybe adding a more rootsy, thoughtful turn. Songs such as the stormy-sweet "Claire" and "Outside of a Dream " were a keen mix of Chris Trapper's rich, passionate voice and his unabashed sentimentality." - Boston Herald

"We’re so smitten by Chris Trapper’s songwriting, honestly, this disc has melted onto the transport system of my trusty Magnavox CD machine. From the opening "Any Little Town" to the concluding "Cadillac," this is great music, the kind of music picky holdouts like you and me so righteously deserve." – Gavin

INTERVIEWS AND FEATURE ARTICLES

PATRIOT LEDGER
December 15, 2006

There is good news for fans of the Boston band the Push Stars:- Chris Trapper said the band ‘‘has never really gone out of my blood.’’ Trapper, of Westwood, will lead a Push Stars show at the Paradise Lounge in Boston on New Year’s Eve. Be warned, though, this gig is not a reunion. MORE

BUFFALO NEWS
November 17, 2006

Though he's best known as songwriter and singer with eminently lovable pop auteurs The Push Stars, I first came to know of Chris Trapper's talent as a student of English and music at Fredonia State College in the late '80s. Back then, Trapper was fronting a band called Awake and Dreaming, and the group had captured my imagination. MORE

PHOENIXVILLE NEWS
November 16, 2006

Boston-based pop-rocker Chris Trapper of The Push Stars will be making his Phoenixville debut at Steel City Coffee House this Friday night, November 17, 2006 at 8:30 p.m. Trapper said that he was asked to come to town by his friend, Anne Heaton, who'll be performing along with Lanky this Friday. MORE

BINGHAMTON PRESS & SUN BULLETIN
October 2006

Chris Trapper knows what it's like to be a faceless drone in a dead-end job. Before his success as a rock musician, he's proud to say he worked at both a McDonald's and a gas station. Well, maybe not proud exactly. But those experiences are a driving force for his songwriting work ethic MORE

JAZZ TIMES
June 2006

Chris Trapper looks like he could be a male crooner a la Michael Buble.  With his slicked back red-brown hair, blue eyes and lean torso, you could easily imagine this former barbershop-quartet singer sporting a snappy suit and crooning into a big old Sinatraesque microphone. MORE

FEATURED ARTIST INTERVIEW--CHRIS TRAPPER
www.bostonbeats.com
March 9, 2006

"The lyrical singer-songwriter thing in Boston is very respected, but in other cities you look for a singer-songwriter room, and they're hard to find. I think that's the nice thing about Boston." Read our interview with Chris and learn more about his life with the Push Stars and his new solo project. MORE

PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE-REVIEW
January 19, 2006

Who wants a cookie? That was the gist of Chris Trapper's spiel to tourists years ago when he was working for a cookie shop at an outdoor mall in Quincy, Mass.  Not exactly a job with future prospects, and Trapper admits the job weighed on him. Especially the night he sat down, after a particularly onerous
shift, to watch a Dixieland band perform. MORE

BINGHAMTON PRESS & SUN BULLETIN
January 19, 2006

Folk wisdom and fortune cookies say that a change is as good as rest--but even Chris Trapper's friends and colleagues were puzzled at first by his detour into the land of Dixieland jazz. MORE

BOSTON HERALD
January 6, 2006

What if the tried-and-true pop music triumvirate of guitar, bass and drums were replaced by clarinet, tuba and banjo? No need to ponder the dramatic ramifications of this hypothetical question any longer. Chris Trapper, frontman for Boston's Push Stars, has just released a rather wonderful solo record MORE

BOSTON GLOBE
January 6, 2006

Chris Trapper would be the first guy to tell you he's always been unhip, even sort of square, when it comes to rock 'n' roll attitude. ''I sang in a barbershop quartet in high school," Trapper says over chocolate cream pie at the Other Side Cosmic Café on Newbury Street, where he used to wait tables a lifetime ago. That was long before his Boston-by-way-of-Buffalo pop band, the Push Stars, briefly became major label semistars and he found himself writing MORE

PATRIOT LEDGER
January 6, 2006

His fans know him as the leader of the beloved New England pop-rock crew the Push Stars, and industry folks know him as a go-to songwriter: Chris Trapper's songs have seen countless movies and TV shows, and have been covered by everyone from matchbox twenty frontman Rob Thomas to girl-rockers MORE

POUGHKEEPSIE PULSE
October 13, 2005

Chris Trapper is best known as the lead singer for The Push stars, a pop/rock and from Boston that has played alongside Matchbox Twenty, Train, Third Eye Blind and Vertical Horizon. The band has had songs in the hot soundtrack MORE

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