Jim Noir - Zooper Dooper

Taking his stage name from a comedian (Jim Noir is Vic Reeves’ real name) and having his songs featured on popular TV shows, such as Grey’s Anatomy, and commercials, you’d probably expect Alan Roberts (so Noir’s more ordinary real name) to be some kind of superstar, selling out big venues, having thousands of people chanting his songs back at him.

But that’s not where his, to some extent, eccentric music belongs. The songs on six-track EP ‘Zooper Dooper’ fit into the tiny venues he’s playing, with their retro and refreshingly non-mainstreamy feel.

Opener ‘Kitty Cat’ is a quirky piece of 70’s soul - tinted, instrumental psychedelic pop, which sounds oddly familiar from the first listen and features a groove that makes it close to impossible to keep still. ‘She Flies Away With My Love’ keeps the EP’s retro sound, which is most noticeable in form on the beat and arrangement of almost countless instruments tinkling through the background.

The first 3 minutes and 24 seconds of title track ‘Zooper Dooper’, again an instrumental track, could’ve been taken straight from a computer game soundtrack and would surely also have been a great theme tune for some 70’s game show, whilst the last 80 seconds are a spacey, partially shrill soundscape.

Despite the nostalgic feel, songs like ‘Zooper Dooper’ and follow up ‘Do You Like Games’, which features almost Nirvana-verse-esque guitar riffs, aren’t just cheap copies of ‘classics’. Whilst ‘Map’ is somewhat unflashy, closing track ‘Car’, in which Noir even sings about ‘windscreen wipers’, something you don’t hear people sing about very often, sounds a little darker than the more blithe first half of the EP.

Noir writes songs that are unobtrusively catchy and amiable clichéd. Music doesn’t always need to be reinvented, that often leads to lousy results. It’s fine to be inspired from the past, as long as the outcome is as felicitous as ‘Zooper Dooper’.