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The Jape Squad 'Breakfast with Jape Squad' spooky015 
Reviews and Articles Sleazegrinder – Boston, USA The Jape Squad is a many-limbed group of jangly superhipsters (I think there’s like, 7 of ‘em, plus maybe a couple more who just shake tambourines and look cool) who sprang to wobbly life in 2001, with the intent to out-drug the Spacemen 3. Or at least to play some truly druggy Spacemen 3 covers. Their signature sound is gospel-tinged, soulful garage rock n’ slop that mixes the junkie-glam bliss pop of West Coast superfreaks like Brian Jonestown Massacre and the Dandies with the acid-fried Velvets-isms of Jesus and Mary Chain and whatever you want to call that ethereal, proggy space cult ‘otherness’ of the Polyphonic Spree. That’s a lot of crazy-ass sounds to mash together, but the Squad o’ Japes manage to squeeze a very groovy sound out of all the loose-limbed hippy-punk weirdness. “Breakfast” is not the meal that’s brought to mind while this one shimmers away on the stereo, but since they don’t have a name for eating bowls full of puffy clouds and rays of sunshine yet, I guess it’ll have to do. Enjoy yr trip, funky astronaut. -Sleazegrinder
KindaMuzik – The Netherlands Retro is hip. Een band als The Strokes geeft bijvoorbeeld met veel succes een nieuwe draai aan een oud geluid. En zo is er nog een karrevracht aan andere bandjes die hun inspiratie zoeken in papa’s platenverzameling. Zo ook het Australische Jape Squad. Vanaf het eerste tot en met het laatste nummer is er geen twijfel mogelijk over de favoriete band van de heren uit Melbourne. Dat is The Rolling Stones. Het aparte is echter dat Jape Squad niet zo zeer inspiratie lijkt te halen uit de discografie van de Engelse rockdinosaurus, maar ervoor gekozen lijkt te hebben om deze integraal samen te vatten op hun tweede plaat Breakfast with...Jape Squad. En daarmee lijkt het meeste ook wel gezegd over dit plaatje. Het wordt moeilijk om een gedetailleerde beschrijving te geven als om de regel de naam ‘Rolling Stones’ zou vallen. Qua instrumentarium, akkoordenschema’s en algehele sound is dit weinig meer dan een kopie, en niet eens zo’n hele beste. Ja, er komt nog wel eens iets voorbij dat ook aan de Velvet Underground refereert en een orgeltje dat aan The Animals doet denken, maar of ik dat nu afwisseling moet noemen... Jape Squad klinkt als een bandje met een te grote voorliefde voor de muziek uit de jaren ’60. Wellicht is het leuk voor nostalgici en doen ze het goed op huwelijksfeestjes. De heren van Jape Squad zullen echter snel de muzikale horizon wat moeten verbreden en bovenal op zoek moeten gaan naar een eigen geluid. Want dat ontbreekt hier volledig. Wat ook mist, is een mooier hoesje. Maar dat is de minste van alle zorgen.
Incendiary Magazine – The Netherlands A few weeks ago, at a bus stop in Lisse, I got my hands on something small, perfectly rounded and Australian. And no, it wasn't Kylie. After recovering from this obviously crushing disappointment, I dried my tears to find Breakfast With... by 7 man Melbourne formation Jape Squad, an album which took about 7 months to make it from Oz, all the way to my grubby little mitts at that cold, Dutch bus stop. Hardly a new release then, but what the hell, I won't tell if you won't. Breakfast With... is Jape Squad's second album, their first for independent Aussie label Spooky Records (distributed around these parts by those Dingo lovers over at Undertow). We enter the record through "Heather's Head" and it feels somehow familiar. It's a bit like Pavement playing the scruffier parts of "Exile on Main Street" or perhaps The Stones of '72 tidying up Pavement's "Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain". The next couple of tracks follow along the same loose lines, but this isn't loose and irritating like the wing mirror on your Opel Kadett, it's loose and comfy like the pants you doss around in late at night. The smoky R&B goes for a well earned sit down, and Spot and Nabisco Stu (a truly great name, I think you'll agree) step up and twiddle knobs and play with gadgets for the trippy interlude "Ryders". And talking of Ryders, Blake's vocal is a pretty good Shaun Ryder impression for much of "Bug Spawn" which fades in to deliver more raggedy, jagged, easy, electric blues. "Bus Monkeys" is a sneering, sliding country waltz, with a jeering, shouty chorus and the second third of the album is rounded off with a few more squelches and loops from Spot and my mate Nabisco Stu. The third three song third of the disc is a little more pedestrian and gives us more of a taste of Blake's chameleon vocal style, which throughout the album echoes Lou Reed, Liam Gallagher, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Lloyd Cole, but not necessarily in that order. Breakfast With... is the sort of album that you could put on when you've got friends round and they would say "Who's this?". "Jape Squad" you'd reply and your friends would probably look surprised and say "Oh, I thought it was...............". It has a well-worn familiarity and contains enough user-friendly licks and tricks to make it an enjoyable record. The songs are, for the most part, well written and they create a confident and relaxed groove but I'd like to hear them do something a little more daring or unsafe and I shall just go back to my bus stop and wait for Kylie until they do.
Eat This Garage - Australia The Jape Squad are a seven-member musical gang who’ve just released their second album, Breakfast with Jape Squad. It’s their first release for Spooky Records and judging by their slippery proclivity for subtle experimentation, plus the danceable furrows that expel from the speakers, plus the melodic hooks that contain the Jape Squad’s knobbly free verse; this is a band that deserves to be the righteous flag-bearers for canny fraudsters, pill-poppers and booze-hounds everywhere. Heather’s Head signifies the beginning of this loping chaos. Starting off with a guitar and organ that takes it’s magic from transmogrifying Steve Marriot’s more idyllic moments, it lurches and then rushes into some unsteadily-delivered stanzas, which makes one believe that the Jape Squad are just enthusiastic exponents of bitter gibberish. Two Halves is the real smoky here, it’s a sleeper that doesn’t reveal itself from the load of distortion placed upon it, but after a secondary listen the catchiness of the song structure becomes apparent. It’s a tune that is the rambunctious equivalent to Mark E. Smith’s more inebriated artistic expressions. Lookin’ For A Reason and It Don’t Matter sound like some punked-up blues band from Chicago, or even better, something that should’ve been released by The Saints on Prehistoric Sounds. Bug Spawn is one of the album’s many apexes. With its Blonde On Blonde style of quickly fading up into the tune, to the slurred lyrics tumbling, to the rolling organ rattling this demented sing-along to its unanticipated quick fade-out, Bug Spawn is a truly momentous high point. See The Sunshine finds the Jape Squad dressed in a blundering, yet bubblegum mishmash of The Turtles, or perhaps Boyce & Hart’s better finery. The concluding track, Clouds Move Underground, is part somnambulism, while the other part is some type of lysergic-shimmering, all held together by a sneer, then a smirk, and ultimately a defiant smile. It’s the type of defiant smile a band usually has when they know they’re good enough, or when they’re closing such a definitive statement that this album is. Breakfast With Jape Squad is a unique, swaggering masterwork of music that’s full of learned crooks and drunkard funkiness.
Shane Jesse Christmass
PlatoMania - The Netherlands
Jaja, we zijn weer terug aan het begin van de
jaren '70. He, daar heb Beat Magazine - Australia The Jape Squad are a seven-member musical gang who’ve just released their second album, Breakfast with Jape Squad. It’s their first release for Spooky Records and judging by their slippery proclivity for subtle experimentation, plus the danceable furrows that expel from the speakers, plus the melodic hooks that contain the Jape Squad’s knobbly free verse; this is a band that deserves to be the righteous flag-bearers for canny fraudsters, pill-poppers and booze-hounds everywhere. Heather’s Head signifies the beginning of this loping chaos. Starting off with a guitar and organ that takes it’s magic from transmogrifying Steve Marriot’s more idyllic moments, it lurches and then rushes into some unsteadily-delivered stanzas, which makes one believe that the Jape Squad are just enthusiastic exponents of bitter gibberish. Two Halves is the real smoky here, it’s a sleeper that doesn’t reveal itself from the load of distortion placed upon it, but after a secondary listen the catchiness of the song structure becomes apparent. It’s a tune that is the rambunctious equivalent to Mark E. Smith’s more inebriated artistic expressions. Lookin’ For A Reason and It Don’t Matter sound like some punked-up blues band from Chicago, or even better, something that should’ve been released by The Saints on Prehistoric Sounds. Bug Spawn is one of the album’s many apexes. With its Blonde On Blonde style of quickly fading up into the tune, to the slurred lyrics tumbling, to the rolling organ rattling this demented sing-along to its unanticipated quick fade-out, Bug Spawn is a truly momentous high point. See The Sunshine finds the Jape Squad dressed in a blundering, yet bubblegum mishmash of The Turtles, or perhaps Boyce & Hart’s better finery. The concluding track, Clouds Move Underground, is part somnambulism, while the other part is some type of lysergic-shimmering, all held together by a sneer, then a smirk, and ultimately a defiant smile. It’s the type of defiant smile a band usually has when they know they’re good enough, or when they’re closing such a definitive statement that this album is. Breakfast With Jape Squad is a unique, swaggering masterwork of music that’s full of learned crooks and drunkard funkiness. Shane Jesse Christmass |
