Jamie T (Electronic Beats)

 
It’s one in the afternoon and Jamie Treay has just woken up. “Alright mate,” he slurs in a voice still furry with last night’s dream fuzz. He was performing last night, he explains, in Portsmouth. Any good?  “Yeah, touring is better these days. People actually turn up to the shows now…”


A couple of years ago Jamie T wasn’t on the mainstream radar. His sphere of fame extended primarily to a few pubs in South London, where bemused locals would watch the gangly 21-year-old bash out eclectic, rambling, punk-reggae-hip hop mash-ups on an acoustic four-string bass.

“Quite a lot of stuff happened in those days,” claims Jamie, waking up quickly. “I remember being in a pub in Kingston with around eight people all sitting down and watching. They were all regulars, or so I thought, and I started freestylin’ a song about lads from Battersea all thinking they’re big boys when they’re not. There was this line about ‘Battersea brats/are all a bunch of twats’ or something. It turned out they were all from Battersea. Things got a bit moody after that…”


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Having honed his skills on the back-room circuit, Jamie built up a bedroom studio in his house in Wimbledon. He began making mixtapes that blended together tunes by his favourite bands (The Clash, Beastie Boys, Jimmy Cliff, Rancid) and his own compositions. He called these tapes the “Panic Prevention” series after a self-help CD his mum had given him a couple of years before, when his excessive lifestyle was, he admits, “spiralling out of control”.

It was when he started his own night at London’s intimate 12 Bar Club though, that his name really started to spread. The spot was a regular A&R haunt, and it wasn’t long before Jamie’s talents were noticed. He was approached by a Virgin Records rep and asked if he would be interested in making an album. “I told him to piss off at first,” recalls Jamie. “Then he came and asked again, and I said I’d think about it and get back to him the next day. I thought ‘fuck it, I might as well’. I mean I wasn’t doing anything else…”

Over the last year or so the wider public has experienced a taste of Jamie’s idiosyncratic style via singles like “Sheila” and “If You Got The Money” - both shining examples not only of his magpie musical style (he throws in everything from electronic beats and slippery punk basslines to rinky-dink Casio melodies and sampled strings), but also his witty and observant lyrics, which document the seamier side of London life: getting drunk and getting laid; drugs and fights; nightbuses and crap New Year’s Eves…

“It’s not intentional,” declaims Jamie. “I just write about things that are around me. I’ve never listened to music that’s overly metaphorical, I prefer stuff that’s got some reality to it, and all the songs I write are about situations I’ve been in, things I’ve done with my mates. They’re quite personal, really.”

Jamie’s debut album, also called Panic Prevention, features more of the same. Following a memorable intro – namely, Jamie yelling “fucking croissant!” - it veers from one messy tune to the next with gleeful, almost drunken abandon. Alongside the afore-mentioned releases and new single “Calm Down Dearest”, there’s the loose-limbed pseudo-punk of “Brand New Bass Guitar,” the dark tale of “So Lonely Was The Ballad,” the surprisingly exotic “Salvador,” and the bristling urban thrust of “Pacemaker”.

The catchy choruses, sing-a-long melodies and short skits (most of which involve Jamie swearing) cleverly counter-balance the streetwise lyrics and astute musical referencing. It makes for a more cheerful listen than The Streets, and it’s less corny than Lily Allen. The album has already had the critics comparing Jamie to Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, The Streets, Billy Bragg, Paul Weller…does that please or annoy him?

“I couldn’t really give a fuck,” he chirps. “I mean, it’s good I suppose but I don’t think it’s particularly true. It happens at the shows too. By the end of the night you’ve run out of fingers from counting the people you’re supposed to sound like. I just do what I do, I don’t think about it too much.”

Though the album was more or less recorded by Jamie alone, he now has a backing band called The Pacemakers, and he’s already planning for a second album. That said, his audience numbers are growing at an alarming rate and he isn’t quite sure what will happen next. “The first album is a bit…disjointed,” he admits. “So a second album would probably be different. This one was just something that happened. I had these songs, these moments of my life already and I just threaded them all together. They were mine, now they’re yours. Onto the next thing, whatever that may be.”