Wimbledon’s latest and greatest gutter mouthed poet is back and this time has dropped the melancholy of Carry on the Grudge and opted for something that is slightly more uplifting to say the least. His fourth effort arrives following three singles, ‘Tinfoil Boy’, ‘Power of Men’ and ‘Drone Strike’ – each song suggesting Jamie has ditched the lo-fi scuzz and swagger that brought him so far previously. Where does this album leave him? It certainly feels like a departure but is the new ground for Jamie something we want in his music or is that mouth somewhat sanitised now?
Jamie T was once renowned for documenting the nights home, the dodgy mates, the dabbling with drugs and the epic fall from grace. It was this ‘fall’ that gave Jamie’s music a point of reference with other people. It had grit, you could spit the words in angst – phlegm and poison was part of Jamie’s style and this gave us something to love. At times throughout Trick we get glimpses of this, the aforementioned single, ‘Drone Strike’ gets Jamie back on his quick tongue, his words race ahead of him faster than they have ever done before. The question comes, though, is what is being sung that interesting anymore or are they just half-arsed rhymes that don’t really carry any substance in them? The descriptions are slightly benign attempts at describing a generation of drones but with the same imagery, the same stories and the same characters that plenty of artists were observing ten years ago. Including Jamie T himself – “Drinks at the bar no glitz and glamour / No hits, just bangers, these kids they're crackers.”
‘Tinfoil Boy’ shows the album in its brightest light – not in terms of topic but it carries energy and it wraps a sucker punch in its tension. It sounds obscurely like Kasabian – but in a good way. It’s furious with itself as a song. ‘Power Over Men’ is certainly up there with the pop end of Jamie’s spectrum. This is where fans old and new may be divided, it cuts through the sharp tongue and wit that Jamie once possessed and swaps it in favour of larger choruses and certainly a more polished sound. The tapestry of storytelling that Jamie was once renowned for stitching is dismantled further throughout the likes of ‘Dragon Bones’ where his words once again fall hopelessly onto cliche: “Upside down / Inside out / If I had a gun / I’d blow my brains out.” The musicality that lurks behind is okay at best, it’s the type that is likely to make you shrug your shoulders. It’s somewhat beige, a predictable song structure with a tame delivery.
Four tracks in and we hit ‘Tescoland’ which opens with the store tannoy – an interesting beginning is met with a slightly more paced delivery, the tempo rocks and Jamie sings with a Mick Jones slur. The guitar falls perfectly into Joe Strummer’s lap and you could be forgiven for thinking that Jamie T’s soft spot for supermarkets is no coincidence. ‘Joan Of Arc’ rumbles with an AM sensibility to it, Jamie has taken those “oo-oo’s” that Matt Helders made famous and at one point in the pre-chorus he almost drops into that atypical Alex Turner croon. What has happened to Wimbledon’s famous artful dodger some might ask? Well, it seems he has found his new market and is somewhat sick of the smaller dives he was once accustomed to playing. As a song, it is big and it shows Jamie does possess the songwriting ability to take his sound on to bigger stages. It won’t half piss off some of his fans though.
Where the album shines, it glows with promise. ‘Solomon Eagle’ is a loose bounce of a song, it jives to a dense rhythm and carries glimmers of dub in its wake. Jamie’s lyrics show a little more love for themselves; his social commentaries are done to death previously but they show a little more imagination with wordplay than the others. In ‘Sign Of The Time’, although the guitar shows resemblances to Green Day’s ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’, it finds that solemn, contemplative side of Jamie T’s music than won him so many fans previously. It has to be said, that although you can side with his sharp-tongued wit, Jamie T’s penchant for the thought-provoking slower song is similarly as fantastic. ‘Self Esteem’ does similar, Jamie pulls out that wrangled wooden acoustic that is likely to have written many of his previous stories. Singing slowly, just above a whisper you finally get the sense that this song holds sentiment. It rumbles like some of the Blur stuff circa-13, it holds a new delicacy that Trick rarely shows.
As an album, Trick marks a departure for Jamie T. Maybe this is his growing up album? Maybe this is the maturity that we have sought for a while from his music. It undresses the previous “cracked up piece of shit called the bass guitar” and thrusts Jamie under better production and into cleaner clothes. It is likely to be a divisive album with the way it ruthlessly cuts ties with the lo-fi aesthetic, it unfortunately misfires at times and in doing so leaves empty lyrics and a largely soul-less album. Only where he finds soul once more is within the depths of the anxious, sedated tail-end of Trick.
Tom Churchill
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