Jim Noir - Tower of Love

Genre rock Publisher Barsuk Records External Links Official Jim Noir Website Official Barsuk Records Website

Although the United Kingdom has a fairly large population, we don't have a huge amount of big cities. After London, there's a very big drop-off; we don't have the equivalent of a New York, a Los Angeles, a Chicago, or a Seattle. With most of the music press being in London, it means that London tends to be in focus over anywhere else.

We do have a Manchester though.

A curious combination of multiple universities, art schools, and the urban decay of one of Brtiain's earliest industrialised cities gave way to many famous groups like Joy Division/New Order, Happy Mondays, The Smiths and Oasis, but the city has a vibrant music scene as well as its superstars. Jim Noir is a Manchester local of the best sort; cheeky, amusing and yes, a little inventive.

Tower of Love is Noir's debut, and what a pleasant one it is at that. Possibly borrowing a trick or two from fellow local Badly Drawn Boy, it's three-quarters of an hour of light, jaunty music, but with an air of happy menace. "If you ever step on my patch/I'll bring you down" Noir gleefully sings over a Beach-Boys-at-33-rpm backing track on the opener "My Patch." Or the threat of getting his dad to retrieve his football in "Eanie Meany."

There's something of a fairground atmosphere to the record, in a similar vein to last year's The Debt Collection by The Shortwave Set. It rejects most of today's modern rock trappings, heading back to a sound reminiscent of Camberwick Green, Ivor The Engine, and Bagpuss; an Oliver Postgate world of Victorian fairgrounds and Blackpool rock. "Tower Of Love," the album's title track, is a wordless love-song to the North with its seaside faire and faded piers, a world about to be abandoned to the past in an era of super-casinos and the gentrification of Manchester's inner city.

But, if the fairground has to be pulled down and make way for progress, then Noir gives it a rousing send-off as well as describing a particularly British childhood, sometimes happy ("Key of C"), sometimes melancholic ("Tell Me What To Do" is the closest the album has to a modern sound, borrowing heavily from The Beatles' "Taxman").

The final word is given in "The Only Way," repeating a verse over and over, making only slight modifications to the sentiment of "The last time I can tell you/To tell you you meant so much to me." Not just a goodbye to childhood, but a closing of the door on an entire concept of childhood; the languid puppetry and sideshow fun of yesteryear being replaced just as surely as Manchester's Arndale Centre's yellowing tiles, giving way to an expensive vision of glass and metal. Join Jim for its wake with a glass of orange squash and a Marathon bar.