Space Oddity

I can see the headlines now if this ever gets out. ‘Mancunian man in jaunty pop shock’. ‘Guitars downed by Manchester man’. ‘Beck reborn in North of England’. This really is a surprising record - you don’t find many young men from Manchester writing music like this.

No simple chord progression in sight, no drawling vocal, and no discernible silly walk. Jim Noir breaks the mould of his genealogy spectacularly, and in doing so has produced an album of the type that doesn’t come around very often - one which is completely impossible to pigeon hole, and therefore genuinely interesting. The big question though, is whether it’s really any good.

Well yes, it sort of is actually. Jim Noir is a solo artist in the most extreme sense of the word; writing, singing, mixing, sampling, and producing are all roles he can add to his CV without a hint of a lie, and for one man to have produced an album so diverse as this is impressive in itself.

If you asked me what it sounds like, I’d be stuck - the closest comparison I can draw, and it’s by no means conclusive, is that it sounds like Beck covering The Flaming Lips, or possibly the other way round.

It’s all soft vocals, big beats, spooky synth sounds, space dwelling rhythms and weird noises. But all of this over the basis of a Brian Wilson-esque song craft - there’s definitely something of the Californian sun about Jim Noir. Like I say, not easy to pigeon hole. Not easy to listen to either - this is certainly a small doses album. It’s quirky, and might even be brilliant, but it’s also quite unnerving and does nothing to put the listener at ease.

A good effort from a talented maverick, who has closed his eyes, defied his surroundings, and woken up somewhere between Malibu Beach and space. A psychedelic 60s fairytale brought crashing into the modern age by a solitary genius. Just don’t listen to it on your own in the dark.