Song Shards
Jalopy, 2025
9/10
The Grammy winner and long running musician Peter Stampfel brings a long a crew for this 18th album that assembles soul jingles, stoic jingles, vintage jingles, prayers and rounds for 46 of his Freak Folk ideas.
The light and warm “Muses Nine” starts with soft guitar and soulful backing vocals to complement the somewhat strained lead vocals, and further along “Swells Hells Bells” emits gruff, layered singing that unfolds artistically.
Deeper into this disc, “You Are The Product” finds a dreamy place to reside via the intimate guitar and harmonic singing, while “You Fight For Your Life” is vocally more firm and oddly rhythmic.
The back half of the listen brings us jingles that are less than a minute long. “Pepsi-Cola” is a playful piano led bout of retro energy, and “White Tower Hamburgers” is an upbeat burst of call and response group singing.
Stampfel’s resume goes back to the ‘60s when he started the Holy Modal Rounders, and his iconoclastic vision has been constant. The songs here are often unusual, humorous and sonically atypical, as he continues to play folk music like no one can or would.
Travels well with: Peter Stampfel & The Bottle Caps- Demo ‘84; Jackson And The Janks- Write It Down