Jimmy's Show

Album description

According to Allmusic’s Tim Sendra, Jimmy’s Show is a “bubbly mixture of obscure British psych and bedroom pop, spiced with loopy lyrics and sticky sweet melodies” The Clash magazine’s Simon Butcher described the album as “[p]layfully naïve Brian Wilson-inspired pop”, “entertaining the inner child with tongue-in-cheek lyrics and psychedelic funky pop.” The BBC’s Gary Mulholland called Jimmy’s Show “an album of perfect modern psychedelia, pristine in content but ramshackle in style, as at home with synths and drum machines as it is with acoustic guitars and martial Ringo drums, and packed full of sadness and dread and love for a ghostly choirboy harmony.”

Track listing

Everything by Jim Noir.

Critical reception

Jimmy's Show was met with positive reviews by most critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 72, based on 7 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Allmusic’s Tim Sendra wrote that while Jimmy's Show lacked “break-out singles”, “the tracks flow together seamlessly, delivering hook after hook until you can't help but smile at the sheer goofy poppiness of it all”. Describing the album as “weird music” that “should be instantly familiar to anyone with a working history of pop music of the last 40 years”, he concluded that "Jimmy's Show is yet more proof that Noir is a pop music magician.” In similar vein, the BBC’s Garry Mulholland called the album “a 13-track trip down The Beatles’ Penny Lane, blending the various song styles of Paul McCartney, Ray Davies, Brian Wilson and Gruff Rhys into a cute lo-fi celebration of a northern town on a sunny day” beneath which “misery and alienation lurks”. Apart from noting the album’s influences, he especially praised “Noir’s almost offhand genius with melody”.

Despite criticising the song titles, stating they were “enough to inspire a shudder”, the NME’s Pete Cashmore praised the humour on Jimmy’s Show, calling it a “funny (peculiar) album filled with tinkles, tootles, swirls and noodles”.