Love Songs

Very smart clean vinyl with a very strong cover.

The debut album by this '80s New Zealand rock group is an exceptional -- if short -- affair from the Flying Nun stable that brought such ahead-of-time wonders as the Chills and the Tall Dwarfs. While the label may be best known for a signature sound, that of melodic and inventive guitar-based pop of the sort the dB's, early R.E.M., and Yo La Tengo were dealing in. The Jean-Paul Sartre Experience sound veered closer to the U.K. indie sound of the Loft, Felt, and late Wire. Simple melodic songs played with a subtlety and control on a par with Brian Eno's reduced minimalism -- while keeping a folk simplicity to all of the songs -- this album has a low-tech ambience by necessity feel that is the common inimitable charm of '80s Kiwi pop. On later albums the group employed more corrosive distortion and amplitude to challenge their peers Bailter Space and Straightjacket Fits -- and even went to the large American indies Homestead and later Matador although only peaked at the threshold of underground status in America. Love Songs is a quirky yet accessible introduction to an inspired '80s group. And if fans were to compare the dates on this album and a 1990s release by, say, Belle & Sebastian, they might be left scratching their heads as to what they were missing way back circa 1988.