Jimmy's Show

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. The passing years haven't done much to change Noir's sound; if anything, it may be a little more focused and precise, with a bit more care placed on little things like background vocal harmonies and a slightly cleaner production style. There's also a bit more of a late-'60s influence that comes through in the length of a few of the tracks and the heavy Hammond organ that shows up quite often. Really though, you could stand this up to his first two albums and it would be hard to tell them apart. As on Jim Noir, there aren't any break-out singles like there were on his first record ("My Patch" and "Eenie Meenie"), but the tracks flow together seamlessly, delivering hook after hook until you can't help but smile at the sheer goofy poppiness of it all. A couple songs do stand out a bit, like the Nilsson-esque and very laid-back "JJC Sports," the super cheesy "Praise for Your Mother," which sports a horn section that would make Herb Alpert proud, or "Ping Pong Tennis Time," which sounds like a weird cross between Eric Clapton's "Lay Down Sally" and "I'm a Man" by the Spencer Davis Group, and has lyrics about the Queen, her corgis, and the difficulty of cleaning dog waste off carpets. If that sounds pretty odd to you, you're dead on. This is weird music for sure, but what Noir is doing should be instantly familiar to anyone with a working history of pop music of the last 40 years. His inspired and child-like synthesis of all sorts of wonderful sounds continues to impress, and Jimmy's Show is yet more proof that Noir is a pop music magician.