Jean Paul Sartre Experience
Love Songs

It's true. It was neither ever nor will be one of those indispensable albums to explain the evolution of certain trends in any possible and multifaceted History of Rock you might want to tell. Yet there are albums, like this one, that, despite being born already dead, never cease for a minute to chain you to a chair. Albums that you fall in love with immediately; that sound so pop you’d want to give it to the girl at the supermarket checkout.     

The one of the Jean Paul Sartre Experience, Jim Laing (guitar and vocals), Dave Yetton (bass), and Gary Sullivan (drums), is the brief parabola of a New Zealand trio, born in the mid-eighties, with a declared inclination towards what the bassist himself would define as "girly-pop",  a nuanced pop, in pastel shades, for young hearts in love.

"Love Songs" saw the light in 1987, preceded a year before by the EP "Walking Wild in Your Firetime" produced by Flying Nun Records, a historic New Zealand independent label that boasts in its roster people like The Dead C and The Verlaines. What can you expect from a title like that? Nothing good, obviously. And yet here, after the slow folk-pop pace of "Own Two Feet", you begin to take into account all the reservations of the case. The singing, the true distinctive element, verges on the self-satisfied lullaby. Songs like "Firetime", "Grey Parade" and "Transatlantic Love" echo the slowest Velvet Underground and sound "slo-core" avant la lettre. However, the album's average is raised by pieces like "I Like Rain" and its irresistible Casio-tone melody that sounds so lo-fi; "Jabberwocky", built on a ragtime piano with the guitar sinking rough along with the voices of Laing and company; followed by the warm funk-pop of "Crap Rap" and the perfect tension between melody and singing in "Flex". Nor are pieces like "Einstein", "Let There Be Love" and "All the Way Down" with their stripped-down structures, occasionally supported by happy choruses, merely supportive.

This, then, is what Love Songs is. It is a happy album. It stands strong on its own merits. It does not wear satin even for a moment, despite how arduous the task might be when pop and love are involved. I'm sure in other times you would have duplicated the cassette for someone special, for someone to drive with in the car, deluding yourselves into being happy. The magical power of Pop. Worth rediscovering.