Album Review: Jimmy's Show by Jim Noir

After the release of his self-titled second album in 2008, the mysterious English pop whiz Jim Noir took a step back from the grind of the music biz. He returned with a vengeance in 2001, though, releasing an EP every month. Three of them were collections of early works, the rest were brand-new EPs. You might think that Noir may have tired himself out with all that activity, but his 2012 album Jimmy's Show proves his bubbly mixture of obscure British psych and bedroom pop, spiced with loopy lyrics and sticky sweet melodies, still works as well as ever.

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There’s a pretty clear division of camps when it comes to allowance of humour in modern music – there’s “Yay! Randy Newman!” and then there’s “Boo! Bowling For Soup!” The titles alone on Jim Noir’s fourth album – ‘Driving My Escort Cosworth To The Cake Circus’, anyone? – are enough to inspire a shudder. But the good news is that he is still tempering the quirk with his lovely, authentically psychedelic whimsy – which is normally a horrible word but is the only cap that fits. If you don’t like things that tinkle, tootle, swirl or noodle, you’d better give this a miss.

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Noir shouldn’t get too down on himself, for he may just be a genius. Garry Mulholland 2012 Manchester’s Alan Roberts is a king of deception. The stage name suggests a dark persona, but, if Jim Noir is an alter ego, he seems suspiciously similar to a 60s-obsessed one-man band making his music in various rundown bits of Manchester.

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