Manchester, England's Jim Noir burst onto the scene with his tune ""Eanie Meany,"" used to striking effect in the ubiquitous Adidas ads which ran during the 2006 World Cup. Since, his three home-recorded EPs, made with backing group the Beep Seals, have been compiled and expanded upon as the Tower of Love full-length album.
Noir's batch of insanely catchy songs is a sunshiny, harmony-laden nod to a vast array of groups including the Beach Boys, the Kinks, Donovan, Belle & Sebastian, ELO and Supertramp. This amalgamation of '60s psychedelic pop, '90s indie ""twee pop"" and soft-rock of the decades in between is given an electronic, synthy homemade feel on many tracks, a veritable grafting of the above influences packaged for the garage-band age.
One recording technique that Noir uses, however, is actually highly reminiscent of conditions under which mono recordings of the '60s were made into their stereo translations, when that technology became in vogue. Often his song's various elements are starkly separated, for example on ""How to Be So Real,"" where the voice and percussion come solely through the right channel, and other instruments (breezy harmony, keys, guitar) come through the left. This technique, while possibly the result of recording limitations, nevertheless creates a nice retro aesthetic and serves to heighten Noir's engaging, layered production qualities.
Tower of Love seems almost like an excellently crafted study in what it is to be a pop music artist. Besides the obvious mining of rock history, Noir's songs are very self-referential, detailing various thought processes that go into the art of song craft. On the excellent ""In the Key of C,"" he strives for simplicity, singing ""I want to be in the key of C / It's easier to play in,"" while in ""I Me You I'm Your"" he laments, ""I've got words I'd like to use / But they've all been said before / So I'm going to use them all."" The Love-influenced ""Computer Song"" finds him tackling the very issue of combining electronics with much more organic styles, as he sings ""Every time I try to make a silly little song, my efforts are all wasted cause machinery goes wrong."" Noir's obvious preoccupation with the joys and pitfalls of pop music is undeniably enjoyable, and helps direct the album into being a unique, visionary statement.
While at first Tower of Love admittedly seems slightly forgettable and pithy in its airy whimsicality, it grows on the listener with each spin. The songs are immediate and indeed anything but gritty and challenging, yet they come to reveal themselves as endearingly catchy, at times brilliant, gems of pop revelry. Though the bright, shimmering spark of Noir's debut may be hard to top or even recapture on subsequent albums, the songs stand as wonderfully uplifting, colorful studies on, quite literally, themselves—with Jim Noir and his talent acting as the artistic conduit.
