Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Consumer Guide Album

Peter Stampfel and the Bottle Caps: Demo '84 [Don Giovanni, 2020]
Released vinyl-only in 1986 by the folkie standard bearers at Rounder and a quarter century later on a briefly available Rounder CD, Peter Stampfel and the Bottle Caps features four songs not on this abortive demo including the lost working-class speed threnody "Screaming Industrial Breakdown" and three Stampfel didn't write that are stuck on the back end for a reason. Although the personnel doesn't change much from record to record, you can understand why Rounder wanted torerecord--the production here booms and echoes in a most unfolklike manner, particularly on a nonconformist anthem called "Impossible Groove" that could have begun its life with a Chic tribute band. But before too long I realized I preferred it, mostly because Stampfel's voice, which in his forties remained a more puissant thing than the scrawny cartoon hillbilly of the '60s Holy Modal Rounders and as his seventies turned eighties finally began weakening scratchily, has welcome muscle in this iteration. If he recorded this session in hopes of "going commercial," as we used to say, his ambition had benefits, and the many ace songs are now otherwise available only at vintage vinyl prices. "Surfer Angel" may just be a joke whose time was overdue, but "Random Violence" is all too timely. And although Stampfel thought it fitting to rerecord "Lonely Junkie" after Steve Weber came back into his life, "When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)" has become a period piece all too soon. A