JPS Experience - The Size of Food


Love Songs was a promising, if somewhat inconsistent debut, but New Zealand band Jean-Paul Sartre Experience really came into their own with The Size of Food. From the start, they fit pretty comfortably into the homespun pop tradition of the legendary Flying Nun label as practiced by the likes of the Clean, Straitjacket Fits and, especially, the Chills, but they exhibit a certain eclectic, rough-hewn individuality on this release. To some extent, The Size of Food prefigures the crooked pop Scottish groups like the Beta Band would be making a decade later. Vocalist Dave Yetton sometimes sounds as if he's straining to hit the high notes, but this lends a certain vulnerability to the softer songs, like "Shadows," and a sense of urgency to the harder ones, like "Get My Point." The overall effect is more charming than off-putting, somewhat akin to Big Star-era Alex Chilton or even early Peter Gabriel. As "Dry the Rain" was to the Beta Band's Three EPs, "Elemental" is the star in this particular firmament, the song that best illustrates the group's way with a catchy chorus and shimmering guitar-based bed of sound.

5 comments:

Kiwi Tapes said...

http://www.divshare.com/download/2492187-37d

michaeldustdevil said...

wonderful... any chance of re-posting Able Tasmans... Mxxx

hungryg. said...

fantastic - miss my vinyl copy of this one greatly.

good to see that you're still operating, even if the pace has slowed. thisis one of my all-time favorite music blogs! thanks!

hungryg. said...

i'm not the first to mention it, but a repost of jpsx's "love songs" would be wonderful. i second the able tasmans request, also. thanks!

Dave said...

I'm in Canada. I used to have the vinyl of that record many years ago, until it was ripped-off, and I couldn't replace it, being impossible to find in shops here. (What miffed me as much was that I had an original 45 of The Who's "Substitute" on the Reactor label slipped into the "Size of Food" jacket, and that went with it, Grrrrr!)

Years later I got the "Size of Food" CD, but it wasn't the same. For one, the song "Mother" (later covered by Wedding Present) was missing from the CD version.

And for another, I always loved the way the record album ended with a perpetual groove cycling a Bellbird call. The CD is missing that too. I could let that record end and spin for an hour listening to the Bellbird.

(I missed it so much I later bought a CD from Radio New Zealand that was just NZ bird calls, so that I could relax listening to the Bellbird, but that was a short minute of the bird and nowhere near as relaxing. The RNZ clip sounded more like a crow!)