The new album Dancing Boontjes is finally here (label: Excelsior Recordings). On this follow-up to his debut album Geen Achttien Meer (2019), Thijs reveals himself as an activist, bon vivant, and a partner who sometimes messes things up. The new government takes a hit in the protest song Fiasco (Gênant, Gênant), while in Nachtportier, he laments the growing xenophobia, homophobia, and other forms of intolerance in our society. Even under the most miserable circumstances, Dancing Boontjes manages to keep the mood high, whether with or without a bittersweet drink (like a Campari Soda) in hand, as a weapon against the deeply rooted Calvinist dullness of our homeland. Thijs Boontjes gives voice and context like no other to the concept of “human clumsiness,” not sparing himself in the process. Musically, the album moves through rock ‘n’ roll, Italo disco, and the occasional punk outburst, returning to its Nederpop roots that echo throughout.

The album title refers to his family’s garage in Schagen, North Holland, which in the post-war years was occasionally transformed into a ‘bar dancing.’ When the mood struck, the showroom was turned into a dance floor, and a newspaper ad announced that Dancing Boontjes was open again. The nostalgia of this place, which Thijs himself knows only from old photos and stories, served as the album’s inspiration. Thijs: “I love glory, especially when it’s faded. It can look glamorous, but with cracks in the walls and sun-faded curtains that haven’t been opened in years.” The image of that weathered bar symbolically represents a world where everyone’s true nature eventually surfaces. With Dancing Boontjes, Thijs creates his own nocturnal universe where unusual things seem perfectly normal and vice versa, where you can dance away both grand-scale suffering and the struggles of everyday life as if nothing happened.