Fifteen years ago, Wimbledon singer-songwriter Jamie Treays – AKA Jamie T – released his debut album, Panic Prevention. Armed with a guitar, a palpitating sense of social anxiety and a shouty vocal that often veered into an MCing style, Treays anointed himself the chip-shop troubadour of the mid-00s.
His were meandering, confessional songs, telling cautionary tales of London’s seedy underbelly (Sheila), forlorn searches for love (If You Got the Money), and the crushing pressures of the smoke-filled city (So Lonely Was the Ballad). Treays’s delivery was distinctive but his sound existed within the sphere of his contemporaries, featuring the punk-inflected guitars of the Libertines and the UK hip-hop influences of the Streets. It was a successful combination: Treays earned a Mercury prize nomination in 2007 and his following record, 2009’s Kings & Queens, reached No 2 in the UK.
But 15 years is a long time in music. Both the Libertines and the Streets have mounted at least two comebacks since, while Treays’s sound has experienced its own twists and turns. After Kings & Queens, he took a soul-searching five-year break, swapping south London for a trip across the US. He returned with 2014’s Carry on the Grudge, putting aside the spat-out lyricism for a softer songwriting approach. It produced mixed results, such as the stylish, synth-based whisperings of Don’t You Find, as well as the half-baked ramblings of Peter – an inconsistency that spoke of a 28-year-old Treays trying to cast aside the style he had found for himself at 21. He clearly wasn’t happy with the experiment: two years later he released Trick, a return to original form, bringing out the brash vocals for tongue-in-cheek tracks like Tinfoil Boy and Tescoland. But just as it seemed Treays had come back round to the sound that had made him so special, he went away once more.
After another five years of relative silence – broken only by a B-sides compilation release in 2018 – Treays is back again with his fifth record, The Theory of Whatever. Now 36, he is still unafraid to shout out the meanderings of his mind, but he is taking more time to consider what he wants to say – and sometimes even sing – across the album’s 13 tracks.
The result can be joyously anthemic. Treays says he wrote about 180 songs in the years since Trick, endlessly doubting the direction of his new record until he unearthed a demo for the track The Old Style Raiders and finally realised he had his sound. It was an inspired choice: opening with an infectious guitar melody and background yelps of revelation, the song builds to a singalong chorus where Treays displays a newfound crisp falsetto, confessing to the listener that it’s “hard to find something to love in life” and hopefully concluding that if you find it, it’s worth fighting for.
The communal melodies continue on the rhythmic thundering of A Million & One New Ways to Die and Sabre Tooth, while British Hell and Between the Rocks return to vintage Jamie T – decrying dodgy politicians and the relationships that will break your heart through breakneck-speed spoken-word lyricism. There are misfires in the mix, too. Keying Lamborghinis pairs a sparse boom-bap beat over Treays’s swaggering, repetitive hook – “she’s keying Lamborghinis in my mind” – sounding like an absurdist Sleaford Mods pastiche, while Talk Is Cheap comes across half-finished as Treays’s voice wavers between speaking and singing, playing like a demo track that might have been best left with the 180 others.
Yet when Treays commits to his vulnerabilities on the quieter moments of the album, he produces a beautiful new direction. Leaning into the tentative balladry that stood out on the patchy Carry on the Grudge, St George Wharf Tower and The Terror of Lambeth Love are mainly Treays with his guitar, finding the poetry in everyday mundanity. His voice is clear yet yearning, describing an overcast grey as a “pullover-cloudy sky” while back on the ground where he sits, “flies stick to shit”.
When he first shot to fame in 2007, Treays had a youthful braggadocio – a kid pairing deft lyrics with the kind of exaggerated, gobby accent that can only come through a rehearsed performance. That same act would now be tragically tiresome in a man of his age. Thankfully, The Theory of Whatever takes a gentler, more mature tack; no longer the mouthy street poet of the people, Treays is simply singing his heart out about his muted memories of love, nostalgia and hangovers. It’s a joy to perch alongside and listen to him reminisce.
