Jamie T is back with a new album, Ghosts (100 Days of Morning), and has hinted that this could be the final chapter of his current musical era. The 40-year-old, real name Jamie Alexander Treays, says his landmark Finsbury Park show in 2023 marked "the beginning of the end" and that he is keen to move forward in a different way.
A changed man after Finsbury Park
Treays, who walked off stage after his biggest show yet in 2023, has taken what he considers his first proper break from making music in nearly 20 years. "It's been one long conveyor belt," he says. "It's all work. I've never stopped working."
Now slimmer, bespectacled and smartly dressed, he is newly married and exercises regularly. He recalls the significance of the Finsbury Park show: "I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I definitely felt like something changed in that moment."
New album and Damon Albarn collaboration
Ghosts (100 Days of Morning) feels like a hopeful, life-affirming hangover after a decades-long hedonistic night out. The album includes the track Cocktail, which features Damon Albarn on the credit list after a studio visit last year. Treays remembers Albarn listening to five or six songs in silence, then simply saying "Right, next one."
Treays wrote many of the songs on a solo trip to Siena, giving himself 100 days to process the last 20 years of his life. He has lived with a panic disorder his entire life, and says parts of his career have been "traumatic". He calls for more responsibility from record labels and agents: "Nobody really has responsibility to look after the artist they're signing and putting in a world that is completely overwhelming to them."
What's next for Jamie T
After touring Ghosts and celebrating the 20th anniversary of his debut album Panic Prevention, Treays is serious about calling time on this era. He even plans to phase out his hit song Sheila: "I don't think I'll be playing Sheila for the rest of my days, I will probably phase that out at some point after this year."
He has a couple of ideas for his future but "can't quite work out" which he wants to do yet. Ghosts (100 Days of Morning) is out on October 9.
