T Shall Overcome: Hot Press Talks with Jamie T

Face to face, he flits from introspective to outgoing in a finger click. And, while avowedly non-political throughout our conversation Treays will, several days later, give it to the Brexit crowd, accusing them of behaving “despicably” in the run-up to Britain’s EU referendum. The boy contains multitudes.

You don’t have to meet him to get a sense of this complexity. It’s all there in his music, especially on just released fourth album, Trick (which at the time of writing is locked in a battle to secure UK number one with British country duo Ward Thomas).

Here he pings with dilettante zeal from white kid rap to avant-garde metal, with side-swerves into twee indie and krautrock. There’s a lot happening – which makes the record’s general coherence even more impressive. It’s a tidy mess, an articulate shriek for attention.

Of course, the real surprise is that Trick exists in the first place. For much of the past decade, Treays has been missing in action. After two commercially successfully and positively reviewed LPs (the first of which, 2007’s Panic Prevention, was Mercury nominated), in 2010 he vanished… just like that.

His panic attacks, it was commonly agreed, had driven the intense and sensitive young man from the public eye. It seemed open to question whether he would return; there was indeed genuine surprise that he did with 2014’s Carry On The Grudge. Everyone assumed he had forsaken the limelight and found peace in obscurity.

“I’ve good months and bad months,” he says of his nerves. “I’ve had this since I was 15. If I take care of myself, do the right thing and don’t do anything that I don’t want to, I can make it work. There are rules I adhere to and it seems to be getting there.”

Treays doesn’t think much of my theory that, when he first made a name for himself in the mid 2000s, discussing one’s emotional health in public was unheard of. Whereas nowadays people are more understanding. He shrugs: ARE they more understanding? Jamie T has his doubts.

“It hasn’t changed all that much for the better,” he says. “Perhaps we’re getting there. We have a way to go.”

He recorded Tricks partially in Detroit, a city widely regarded as the post-industrial dystopia where the American dream went to die. The reality is quite different, he insists. Locals are fiercely proud that their town has survived all that has been thrown at it and the art scene is vibrant.

“Post-apocalyptic is not a statement I would make about it,” he says. “People have stereotypes. Actually there’s quite a lot going on. When things leave a city, it creates a vacuum and in Detroit that is now being filled with quite exciting things. Post apocalyptic is an interesting term. It’s not fair on the people – they are super proud of Detroit and have created an infectious atmosphere.”

Treays grew up in Wimbledon, South London and from an early age had his heart set on music. He didn’t necessary feel comfortable in front of a crowd. But what else was he going to do with his life?

“Starting out my two goals were to have a record out and to play Brixton Academy,” he says. “I achieved those ambitions and then people asked, ‘What are you going to do now?’ I didn’t have an answer. When you’re just doing music in pubs and stuff, all you are thinking towards is maybe getting a record deal.

“After the first record I had to have a stop and think. My issue is that there is nothing else I can imagine doing. I’m not good at anything else. I don’t have other options.”

He kicks of his latest tour in Dublin’s Olympia and will gradually build up to a three night residency at London’s Brixton Academy. As an appetite whetter fans can get stuck into the video for his latest single, ‘Power Over Men’. It’s a piece of lurid camp which tells the story of a domestic dominatrix, a fat businessman and well…. we wouldn’t want to spoil the “fun”.

“We went to town on it a little bit,” says Treays, laughing for the first time. “I didn’t want to do something glossy and soulless. What would be the point?”

Jamie T plays the Olympia, Dublin on September 27. Trick is out now.