British singer-songwriter Jamie T seemingly disappeared, but he never stopped writing music. Touring a new album, he plays the Mod Club on Saturday.

Nick Krewen

Music, Published on Fri Dec 05 2014

In the seven years since acclaimed British singer and songwriter Jamie T released his Mercury Prize-nominated Panic Prevention, he hasn’t exactly been the most publicly prolific of musicians.

Indeed, aside from this fall’s release of Carry on the Grudge, the Wimbledon-bred artist, who appears at the Mod Club fronting a five-piece band Saturday night, has only one other album to his credit: 2009’s Kings and Queens.

Privately, it’s another story: while Jamie Alexander Treays may have been out of the public spotlight for the last five years, he wrote 180 songs, of which only a dozen made the cut for the album that will be considered a sea change in style for those who have followed him.

“It was pretty non-stop recording, to be honest,” Treays said late Tuesday afternoon prior to a San Francisco gig. “I’ve always recorded as I’ve written. I’ll write half a song and then finish it off in the studio. But it did take a long time for many reasons. I’m glad it’s done now.”

When he first burst out onto the scene with 2007’s Panic Prevention, Treays’ music was a concoction of Blur-inspired, rap-scented hyperactivity that mirrored fellow Brit Lily Allen’s smarts and energy, and he was quickly hailed by the U.K. music press as a trailblazer.

Kings and Queens was a tad more electrifying and streamlined, and more praise followed. However, at the end of the touring cycle to promote that album, Treays knew it was time take a breather.

“I’m 28 years old now, and I think part of it was just age,” he says of the break. “There were times in life where I wanted to put a stop on things and work out what I wanted to do. I had gotten into this music stuff when I was 18, and really hadn’t had a moment to stop. So it was important for me to take it at a slower pace, really.

“I also wanted to explore music, and you need time to go down those roads to realize some are dead ends. Also, my parents had been sick and I took time to care for them. So when I put it all into context, it’s really not that much of a long time. It might seem to others like a blank spot, but it wasn’t.”

The slower pace is the most significant adjustment of the Jamie T sound, reflected on several Carry on the Grudge tunes, including the striking ballad “Love is Only a Heartbeat Away,” the melancholy “They Told Me It Rained,” the winsome “Mary Lee” and the opener “Limits Lie.” They all serve as strong contrasts to the more active fare of “Zombie,” the rambunctious “Rabbit Hole,” “Peter” and “Trouble.”

For Treays, it was an opportunity to exercise more rhythmic restraint, and edit his prose.

“When I was recording Carry on the Grudge, I was listening to a lot of stuff that was pretty downbeat — Weezer, Marcy’s Playground, Bran Van 3000 — ’90s stuff. There were fewer tempos involved in everything I was listening to and I became obsessed with trying to find power in my own songwriting, without using tempo. It was becoming a bit of a crutch for me, to get out anger or some kind of emotion within the song.

“Plus, my stuff beforehand was so jam-packed with words and tempos, I was kind of getting pissed off with it, really. Before I knew it I was trying to write different styles of songs, because I noticed if I wanted to say less, I’d have to write in order to make them more ambiguous. It was a good learning curve and I was coming out with different material that was touching on more of a personal note, but was easier because I could hide it behind ambiguity.”

Produced in part by James Dring, the Blur and Gorillaz associate who has worked with Treays on all his albums, the title of Carry on the Grudge reflects Jamie T’s state of mind at the time of recording.

“I was talking to a friend about how hard it is to make up your own mind and have opinions on things when you’re force-fed opinions as you’re growing up,” he explains.

“You’re given these statements as though they’re fact, and it seems a lot of your post-teen years are spent trying to work out what’s fact and what’s bulls–t before you can become your own person. So the idea of the ‘grudge’ is, do you carry on living with all that bulls–t that you’ve been taught, or do you turn around and question things again to become your own person? That’s where me and a lot of my friends were at when I was writing this album, so it seemed like a good thing to call it.”

Jamie T: Out of sight, not out of work | Toronto Star