Tuesday 22 October 2013

Sooner Rather Than Later?

Considering my ardent love for Jamie T, it would probably be considered biased of me to label the singer-songwriter as a genius.

However, that word and his name are synonymous in the reviews you may read and the people in music you may speak to.

For Jamie Treays is just that: genius.

But the music industry is currently missing said genius, and his return is eagerly anticipated by the large mass of fans he’s accumulated over the years.

Blunt, and with a lot of brass, the London-born lyricist delivers us the ugly truth about life; the drugs, the death, the alcohol-infused nights, days… you can't sugar-coat the ups and downs of life, but what you can do is turn it into lyrical brilliance; an art Mr Treays has mastered.

And that's where his charm lies. Not in what he sings about, per say, but the way he delivers the stories.

So it’s no wonder so many people are clamoring for another record from the man who twice won best solo artist at the NME awards, in 2007 and 2010 respectively.

His debut album ‘Panic Prevention’ was rightly shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2007, before his follow up record ‘Kings & Queens’ in 2009 definitely didn’t suffer from ‘second album syndrome.’

After festival dates in 2010, he reportedly retreated to the studio to work on his third album, and nothing had been seen of the Wimbledon born lyricist since then, with a hiatus that has lasted over three years  and counting.

That is until December 2012, when a song appeared on Youtube that had Jamie’s trademark slur all over it.

The track ‘Wrongful Suspicion’ by Tim Timebomb (music project by Tim Armstrong, of U.S band ‘Rancid’) features backing vocals from Jamie, and signaled that the Wimbledon scruff was set to return to the music scene.

But then the troubadour disappeared into the abyss once more, leaving fans wondering when, or if, this mysterious third album would ever come to light.

Then, it happened.

A glimmer of hope appeared this summer in the form of Johnny Lloyd, who revealed he was guesting on Jamie’s new album, of which the Tribes frontman claims the London lad has almost finished.

All we know to expect of the much anticipated new record is that “it’s really slow, angry punk” – perhaps a more defined, and refined, Jamie T, with the punk side of things being something he veered more towards on ‘Kings & Queens.’

Of course it’s never going to be perfectly polished – that’s not his style, but that’s what makes him so damn brilliant – he’s had long enough to work on this album, and I predict it’s going to be up there with his first two albums, maybe even overtaking ‘Panic Prevention’ to be his best record yet.

For anyone who is familiar with Jamie T, it’s no surprise that he has in a sense fell off the face of the earth for so long. Johnny Lloyd quipped in his short interview that “he’s a classic character. I know if I walked down Denmark Street now he’d be in the pub.”

And the pub is probably where he’s spent most of his time in his long absence from music, but if that’s what’s given him the impetus and inspiration for a sensational new record, I’ll forgive him.

I believe it will be worth the wait.

Image: NME.com

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