Album Review: Jamie T Trick

What a fuss Jamie Treays has created with his recent critique of Brexit and the “despicable” politicians who facilitated the UK holding a shotgun to its figurative shin and pulling the trigger. “We’ve just been through something as a country, where the most interesting part to me was the despicable way politicians acted,” he said. “It’s become very clear to a lot of people just how much spin is involved in all this shit.”

The same impotent rage crackles throughout the Londoner’s fourth album – a project by turns raw, frustrated and seething with angst. At its best, the fury drives songs of striking passion and insight, such as the single ‘Power Over Men’ – a high-kicking commentary on how women are perceived and treated in society – and the earlier ‘Tin Foil Boy’, an explosive confessional strip lit with metal guitars.

Treays opened up to Hot Press recently about his ongoing struggles with panic attacks – one of the reasons he disappeared from music in the five years leading to previous long-player, Carry On The Grudge.

But from a strictly creative perspective his jitteriness is arguably as much blessing as curse, infusing what might otherwise come across as workaday indie with fervour and bite.

Trick, part assembled in Detroit, is perhaps Treays’ least adorned record yet (its debt to the Clash especially striking). However, it is also his strongest and most coherent – ferocious and tender, swaggering and endearingly fragile.