A Walk In The Dark

Listening to Tower Of Love, the impossibly sunny debut album from Mancunian solo artist Jim Noir, you’d be hard pressed to believe that it’s grim up north.

A breezy cocktail of surfs-up California love-in, candyfloss harmony, jingle-jangle jubilee and mop-top grooving, it’s not exactly the sound we’d expect a 23-year old former data processing drone from Davyhulme (near the threatened Trafford Centre) to make. Where has the post-industrial, post-punk, post-comedown noise-scape gone to then?
“Aw, it’s just a big rip-off of all the things I like,” shrugs Jim. “The Beatles and The Beach Boys were the main things, but there’s Mouse On Mars and Aphex Twin and Boards Of Canada in there because you can’t rip anyone else too much. If you rip everyone off just a little bit, it’ll work out fine I think.”
The west coast waves and luscious ooh-la-las belie a nifty humour and more recognisably indigenous sensibility. The whimsical world of Tower Of Love sees the neighbour’s gnomes broken by a stray football (‘Eanie Meanie’), computer failure reduce our hero to tears (‘My Computer’) and an umbrella purchased with romantic intent (‘Turbulent Weather’).
‘It’s the famous Manchester sense of humour,” grins Noir. “I like boring things, me. I like to take boring things and make them sound interesting because I think that’s better than making interesting things sound boring. But I like to think it’s a bit like Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory – all jolly on the outside and dark underneath.”
He pauses.
“Yeah, it’s the sound of evil.”
As a civilian, young Mr. Noir (Alan Roberts to his mum) spent most of his office hours doodling with electro-pop in his head. Having switched to a more harmonious sound, he was already an accomplished one-man software band, playing acoustics, electrics and building virtual walls of sound, when he hooked up with My Dad Recordings in 2003. Since then, life has been as kind as it can be for a Man City fan. A series of successful EPs – Eanie Meanie, A Quiet Man And My Patch – led to Tower Of Love and the usual chorus of Next Big Thing.
“I feel like there’s been a mistake”, says Mr. Noir. “I’ve just been messing about with this cartoon pop stuff for a couple of years. I didn’t plan anything. I’m just a lazy man who likes staying in his bedroom.”
Sitting in CrawDaddy, just hours before what will be only his eighth gig, I wonder if the pop-supernova in waiting is unnerved by the prospect of appearing at the South By Southwest shindig in Texas next month?
“I tell you what I’m scared about. I’ll have to get a plane. I’m shit scared of flying. I had to come over on the ferry to do this gig tonight.”
Grounded in every respect, Jim seems entirely unaffected by speculation regarding the significance of his bowler hat (“I just don’t want to look like one of them bands in jeans”) and the flurry of lofty comparisons emanating from the music press. While pop commentators have cited John Barry, The Beta Band and Moog-goddess Wendy (formerly Walter) Carlos, Jim is keen to outline far more mundane influences.
“I’d say my favourite kind of music is crap music. You know when you’re in a second hand record store and you see a record with an old lady and a piano on the front? I’m the bloke that buys that and takes it home. Any old tat.”