Noir and SSLYBY carry cheer with their tunes
As spring struggles to seize the slush of Colorado, record labels are releasing poppy albums to put winter to rest.
With the release of Jim Noir’s self-titled album, as well as the newest release by Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin, it seems that simple melodies and electronic vibes may be the warm and gooey remedy to melt away the cold season.
Jim Noir has maintained his psychedelic influences on his follow-up to “Tower of Love” from 2006, but “Jim Noir” does not quite reach the caliber of his earlier work.
His new album features electronic tracks that would seem at home in a science fiction B-movie. Beeping and whirring mesh with Noir’s falsetto tone, delivering an image of an astronaut floating through space and sending his messages back to earth. This is no Ziggy Stardust by any means, but Noir gives the album a consistent energy with his outer space theme.
Most of Noir’s appeal lies in the rhythm of his pieces. They are peppy, pleasant tunes that are perfect for an impromptu underwear dance party or a backyard boom box jam.
However, when the lyrics of the pieces are dissected, Noir gives nothing in the way of complexity. Each song has a repetitive lyrical quality that gets tedious for the careful listener.
“Look around you, look around me, look around you, look around me,” are the lyrics to the aptly named track “Look Around You.” Other tracks follow suit, repeating “What U Gonna Do” and “Don’t You Worry” in line with the song titles.
Noir is a fantastic album for those willing to listen with their bodies and who are not in search of existential words of insight.
Someone Still Loves You, Boris Yeltsin falls under the same vein of happy, cute and relatively shallow music with its newest album, “Perishing.”
With such a ridiculous band name, it seems fitting that the band does not take itself too seriously. Sunny riffs on a twangy guitar are paired with the occasional trumpet, and Philip Dickey makes sweet harmony with John Robert Cardwell in each song.
Unlike Noir, SSLYBY isn’t afraid to play with tempo and style. “Glue Girls,” the first track on the album, pounds forward with catchy intensity, while tracks like “Modern Mystery” are slower and contain a tentative crescendo before a toe-tapping climax.
The joy of these albums is in their simplicity. They do not live up to some bigger artists in lyrical or stylistic complexity, but that is because they do not intend to. They both seem content with creating catchy songs to sing with friends, and nothing more.
Both “Jim Noir” and “Perishing” are available now in most stores.
Contact Staff Reporter Carolyn Michaels at Carolyn.michaels@colorado.edu .
