Jamie T

Mon 7th Dec, 2009 in Features

Following his tour in September, British tearaway Jamie T will return to Australia this summer for another round of raucous raconteuring. The man is set to flex his festival muscle at Falls, Southbound and Sunset Sounds in between some intimate club shows. FasterLouder got him on the phone ahead of his next adventure.

Kings and Queens has become somewhat of a breakthrough hit in Australia. What do you think is the real point of difference between this record and debut Panic Prevention?
I don’t know. We went about it in a similar manner. Probably, and it is obvious, but the main difference is that it’s three or four years on, y’know? We were probably just into different types of music and recording things in a slightly different way as well. We definitely had the same ethos about it and just let the record kind of develop in its own time.

If you let things kind of go in its own manner, there’s always going to be this kind of spontaneous moments of, – œOh, let’s do that’. I did that for about a year and a half and we just never finished anything. I just had new ideas come to me, then later try to make that into some songs.

You’ve mentioned in the past that your approach to Kings and Queens was to write your “third album and not your second”. What exactly did you mean by that?
Well, to be honest that was just a joke that everyone took too seriously. Because I’d thought when I’d get questions about the “difficult second record” , I’d make a joke that it isn’t my second, it’s my third.

Do you find yourself lucky then, that Kings and Queens has been received so well, especially compared to some of your fellow British countrymen such as The Kaiser Chiefs of Bloc Party?
Well, music’s really not a competition and shit. So I can understand, yeah, the difficulties of a second record. As far as fellow countrymen go, I don’t really consider the likes of Kaiser Chiefs nor Bloc Party my contemporaries. To me, they’re a whole different generation in music. I just want myself and everyone to write the best records they can. But I can understand why not: there’s a lot of pressure riding on you.

When you tour, you take the approach of few solo artists by billing your backing band alongside yourself; in this case, Jamie T and the Pacemakers. Do you feel that The Pacemakers have a significant effect to the way your music is created both in the studio and onstage?
Well, we’ve always tried to call it Jamie T and the Pacemakers, whether people print it on the posters or not. They’ve always been a part of playing live. But as it goes when we’re in the studio, me and Ben the drummer do everything. The boys don’t play on the record.

We like to think when we play the record live, we do it quite differently anyway. I feel the live show is a very different entity. The whole things changes and goes to a different speaker, as such.

A lot of the shows you have lined up in Australia are vastly smaller than the larger venues and festivals that you usually occupy in your hometown. How does this affect your stage show?
Well, we always prefer playing the smaller shows in these little clubs. Anything the slightest bit bigger than that, we just try to shrink the stage and make everyone feel like we’re in a club. You can get eaten up by a big stage quite easily. You just have to think about everything that you’re doing a bit more.

Do you feel that a sense of intimacy and passion is lost as, due to the growth of your profile and your music, your audiences and your venues becomes larger?
I think things move on and things change, nothing’s forever. In some cases I feel like we have to put in a little bit more passion to play on those larger stages. Things turn into different kinds of scenarios as time moves on. No matter what, we’ll play the big show and we’ll play the small shows, and we’ll play anywhere you fucking want us to play.

Back on the topic of contemporaries, you’ve often been compared to and, in some cases, held above some of Britain’s top songwriters. How does that make you feel when you hear such accolades?
It doesn’t really do anything, to be honest. Though it is kind of daunting, when people start comparing yourself to people like Jarvis Cocker, because he’s a British institution, y’know? I don’t really listen to what people have to say, anyway. It doesn’t bug me too much.

If you had to, to set the record straight amongst the critics, where would you place yourself amongst your predecessors?
When I think of bands that mean a lot to me, I don’t think of what they compare me to. I think of bands like Rancid and Operation Ivy and the Beastie Boys. People of that kind of thought mean a lot to me. Their music meant a lot to me when I was just a midget, yeah.

How far do you think those artists have affected your musical output?
I’m not sure. It’s kind of difficult to decide. I think you can only get inspiration from a lot of things. And my music doesn’t necessarily sound like it. Probably a good thing that it doesn’t. I don’t know. You’ll just have to ask other people, I suppose.

Jamie T plays the Falls Festival, Southbound and Sunset Sounds triple this summer, with a few headline shows on the side.

Wednesday December 30 – Falls Festival Marion Bay, Tasmania
Thursday December 31 – Falls Festival Lorne
Sunday January 3 – Gaelic Club, Sydney
Tuesday January 5 – Great Northern Hotel, Byron Bay
Wednesday January 6 – Sunset Sounds, Brisbane
Friday January 7 – Southbound, Bussleton
Sunday January 10 – Fly By Night Club, Fremantle