Jamie T, Alexandra Palace

Don't miss the year's best comeback, Jamie T: new album, 'Carry on the Grudge' set for release this autumn.

Remember Jamie T? The youngster with a street urchin’s yowl and a Harrington jacket? Whose glorious, chaotic blend of punk, rap, ska and indie was stuck in everyone’s head throughout the mid 00s?

After years of radio silence, Jamie T is back, ever so slightly care-worn, with a third album Carry on the Grudge and a UK tour: he plays Alexandra Palace on November 14. 

The singer-songwriter emerged in 2006, barely 20 years old, with 'Sheila’ and ‘If You Got The Money’. These singles were joyous: incredibly catchy, somewhere between football chants, street poetry and ‘Roxanne’ by The Police. 

People loved Jamie T’s 'Jack the Lad' swagger, his shattered-glass Cockney (read: Mockney) accent and his drunken slur. Over ska rhythms, in infectious tunes, he conjured an exuberant South London landscape, populated by cartoonish Sheilas, Stellas, Mad Lisas and a Smack Jack the Crackerman.  “If you've got the money/I think it would be funny/ To take your girl/ and spend a bit of your cash for me!” he would observe, insouciantly. 

The two albums that followed, 2007’s Mercury-nominated Panic Prevention and 2009’s glossier Kings and Queens, were adored. Critics saw in him British greats such as Billy Bragg, Joe Strummer and Paul Weller.His lyrics were poetic, observant. It didn’t matter that he was a middle-class boy from Wimbledon: here was a streetwise hero with punk sensibilities.

Despite the acclaim, Jamie T all but disappeared. A series of personal crises halted his musical output and he released nothing for five years. 

2014 marks his triumphant return: third album Carry on the Grudge will be released in the autumn. So far, we only have one single to go on, the slowburning 'Don’t You Find' but it sounds like the hiatus has matured and mellowed him considerably.

Gone are the mockney gobbishness and punk rhythms: instead of aggression, we have an enervated British drawl a la Damon Albarn or Pete Doherty, with a Thom Yorke quaver. The whole thing is slicker, but much more menacing: the throb of drum machine and thrum of synth, along with plaintive overdubbed vocals, compound an atmosphere of threat.

He does still sound drunk, but rather than a Saturday night on the town, it’s the contemplative languor of three years spent drinking. Maybe we should be worried about him, but what a brilliant comeback track this is.