Jim Noir - Manchester Comedy Store, 20.2.06
4/5
By: Hannah Bayfield
He only moved out of his parents' house a year ago. He started his first band with a
friend who, to this day, is known solely as Batfinks. He thinks of himself as a quintessential English gentleman, and it's unlikely you'll hear music more heartwarming all year. This is Jim Noir's story, and although it began back in 2003 when local label My Dad took a profound interest in Noir's collection of home recordings, the live element is only just beginning. There is a very simple reason for this: that being that it's taken Jim a fair amount of time to realise that although writing, performing and recording your music alone in a bedroom is conceivable, the live element can prove somewhat fiddlier.
Cue a helping hand from fellow My Dad resident Jack Cooper and his band, the Beep Seals. By the time Noir and the Beep Seals reach the stage (after a lengthy bit of stand up from the compere - we are in the Comedy Store after all) the packed crowd is waiting with eager expectation. Apparently shy, but with a wicked sense of humour, Noir manages a song or so before deciding that really a fake moustache isn't for him - the rest of the band having already dispensed of theirs.
Making his way through a repertoire of sun-drenched, psychedelic numbers like the wonderfully childish 'Eanie Meanie' ("If you don't give my football back, I'm going to get my dad on you") and Jim's ode to bedroom recording 'Computer Song', the homecoming crowd are enthusiastic, and Noir himself is warming up to them. A fair amount of those in attendance are a collection of friends and family, Noir even shouting to his brother "Ian, you pissed yet?" before apologetically declaring "I am an only child". It's exchanges like this that show it's not only the songs that have a charming, endearing quality to them, but Noir's stage presence too.
The crowd are calling for firm favourite, 'My Patch', to which Jim's response is simply "What do you think I'm going to play next?!" And with a mass-singalong of "if you ever step on my patch, we'll bring you down" (a quaint, English version of gangsta rap, he offers) Jim and the Beep Seals are off, leaving everyone to long for the summer that seems so far away.
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