More about: Jamie T

In the age where the ‘single’ is predominantly singular, the B-side album is an endangered species. Who wastes songs on the flip-side of a 7” vinyl that’ll never see a stereo needle in fear of devaluing the artefact, right? So it’s a noble gesture to a fine rock’n’roll tradition that Jamie T – or a friend who accidentally shared some unreleased songs online, details are unclear – has put together what will probably be amongst the last examples of the B-side compilation, outside of the thrown-together CD 5 of those rip-off box set breezeblocks that’d be better used to build cheap hospitals.

Treays’ B-sides, like his general oeuvre, are a rag-tag bunch. Early fripperies like ‘Fox News’ – a minimalist ambient rap that backed ‘Calm Down Dearest’ – and the solo acoustic ska ‘Livin’ With Betty’ from his 2006 ‘Betty And The Selfish Sons EP’ accentuate his origins as a rap Doherty, since they sound like they were thrown unfinished onto tape in the only coherent five minutes of a three-day glue bender. ‘Meet Me On The Corner’, the flip of ‘Sheila’, particularly sounds cobbled together from samples of rusted playground swings, a soporific hip-hop beat and a verse Jamie couldn’t cram in anywhere else. The wasted urban troubadour vibe is present and correct, but ‘Panic Prevention’’s anxious buzz is absent.

Things pick up with the arrival of the mutilated pop synths of 2006’s free download track ‘Oh My Girl’, a febrile slice of pop reggae froth about a girl descending into alcoholism (the most Jamie T song ever?), and ‘Feel Me’, which trips adorably along on a bastardised Beatles piano frolic. And ‘Fire Fire’, a non-album warm-up for ‘Kings & Queens’, is an incendiary punk thrasher as confrontational as a Pussy Riot gig and as filthy and fucked up as Pete Doherty’s breakfast.

From there, more care is taken on Jamie’s selected ephemera, and they become a skirt through the genre-tangled brain of an artist unwilling to languish on wilting laurels. ‘40/40 ICU’ floats in on a sampled orchestral refrain that wouldn’t sound out of place on an early Jay Z track, before taking off in an edgy ska-roll vein that compliments its original A-side, ‘Zombie’. The ‘Rabbit Hole’ single sheds the spritely and infectious motorik-folk ‘Sycophant’, ‘The Likeness Of Being’ is the sort of siren-swathed urban noir nocturne that would’ve made for an absorbing centrepiece of ‘Trick’ and ‘Thomas Dunn’ is Jamie’s throwaway attempt at a Foo Fighters-esque pop song – all prime examples of Treays becoming more inquisitive, exploring all manner of creative crevices, as he ages. If the B-sides compilation is like publishing the sketchy workings-out of a career, Jamie T’s reveals a talent turned from ragged to restless, all the while gaining the focus of a craftsman’s eye.

Grab your copy of the Gigwise print magazine here.

More about: Jamie T