Jim Bob : 'Goffam'
Released: Out Now!!!
Label: The Ten Forty Sound
Those of us of a certain age will remember indie-punk stalwarts Carter USM, that burned bright for a few years in the early 90s, proving that you could have a real band while still using a drum machine, before vanishing into obscurity. Since splitting in 1998, singer Jim Bob has released seven solo albums, the latest being a conceptual outing into a city that's falling apart, abandoned by the authorities and hoping for a rescue by superheroes that will never come. It's a city that you'd love to call a post-apocalyptic science-fiction dystopia, but scarily doesn't feel a million miles away from where our own world is heading.
Goffam is a series of musical vignettes that tell the stories of the city and its inhabitants. It opens with a piano led bleak hymn to the 'golden years' of the old. It sets the tone: death, decay, heartbreak and misery. The next track is a lot more upbeat musically, but lyrically introduces us to the horrors of Goffam: "There's a shop that sells everything you need / they'll put glue in a bag / they're sell you individual fags / and you can learn to smoke before you can read." A short, fast, upbeat track about the police of Goffam follows, and at 49 seconds feels almost like an advertising jingle that leaves you with a faint sense of unease: no-one in the city, not even the cops, are entirely on the level.
The album brings us character studies of the store clerk that wants to be a superhero, the secret millionaire, the sad abandoned policeman and the homeless architect, the latter being a brilliant 90 second pop song. There's also a creepy track about teenage death with a sing-along chorus that will leave you wondering if it's okay to join in or not. One Small Step For Man is an oasis of happiness in the middle of the album. An interval of optimism, suggesting that maybe doing something nice for someone else or even yourself could help solve the problems the city faces.
As the album approaches the end it raises the question of what happened to the heroes, and why they never came. Our Heroes laments their loss in ballad form, while Superhero Midlife Crisis gives us some idea of where they went in much more rocky finale. The album's closing track is bittersweet, it's optimistic, but only in so much as suggesting that there's somewhere better to live not far away, the implication being that Goffam is past saving, and can only be abandoned.
Goffam is one of those few concept albums that really works. It evokes a sense of place, albeit one that might be a lot easier to envision if you've seen the recent Batman films, and the whole thing fits together cohesively despite the varied array of musical styles Jim Bob uses.
Words: Dean Love
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