Jamie T: Music is a really good way of stemming the negatives of anxiety

A week before releasing an album, the recording studio is probably the last place you might expect to find a musician.

Unless it’s Jamie T.

If ever you were looking for the songwriter, from south London’s Wimbledon, his studio is the first place to look. He’s not had a fruitful morning, by his own admission, but he’s getting there.

“I’ve spent an hour looking for a song on my computer,” he says.

“I’ve got it, but that’s all I’ve done.”

Treays - that’s what the T stands for - writes constantly, and he finds the period between finishing an album and it being released a particularly creative time. The lack of pressure afforded by working without a deadline makes ideas flow, he says.

“More than anything, it’s cathartic,” adds the 30-year old.

“It’s a great feeling knowing you have something coming out, almost like you’re washing your hands of it and ready for the next thing. It’s that excitement that keeps me going. Even when I’m supposed to be on holiday, I sneak into the studio.”

Trick, his fourth album, has just been released and will hopefully be winging its way to the top of the album chart as you read this.

His previous three have all made the top four - Kings & Queens went to No 2 - so there’s an expectation, at least from fans and onlookers, that Trick will do at least as well.

“As always, it felt like it was taking forever to write and record, but whenever I think that, the record tends to be finished within a month. It’s something to do with the way I write. It’s very unglamorous, and I don’t see the fruit of my labour for a long time. It takes several attempts for me to get a song. I really have to work at it, and I take ages to write the end.”

That partly explains why he was in the studio looking for old scraps of songs on the morning of our interview.

While writing for his third album, Carry On The Grudge, he estimates he had around 180 songs and rough ideas. Some he went back to for 2015’s EP Magnolia Melancholia, but the rest?

“Some might come back around, but most get lost to the hard drive. I always think, ‘There must be something on there I can use’, but so far, nothing.”

For the first time, with regard to Trick, Treays says he has fond memories of making an album. Normally, it takes a lot longer for that to happen, despite the fact he admits making it was far from easy.

“The main thing is when I was writing it, I was really enjoying myself.”

Treays released his debut, Panic Prevention, in 2007. While fellow Londoner Lily Allen grabbed the headlines for her tuneful takes on life in the capital, it was Treays, the superior wordsmith, that for many, provided a more accurate screenshot of mid-Noughties adolescence.

He followed it up two years later with Kings & Queens, and then he was gone. There was no sign of Treays, who managed to retreat from public life completely. Almost six years later, Carry On The Grudge arrived, during which time a Facebook group was founded to try to find out where the songwriter was, with worried fans posting sightings of Mr T to reassure others.

Treays has been extremely candid regarding his anxiety, and the condition played a part in his lengthy retreat.

Looking simply at the time taken between his albums, and knowing about his anxiety, it would be too easy to assume the 12-month break between his EP and Trick means Treays is ‘cured’.

“It’s a bit more complicated than that, but I suppose the easy answer is yes, I am better,” he says, cautiously.

“Writing and releasing music is a really good way of stemming the negatives of anxiety. It could also be that me releasing more music means I am worse. But the main thing is to keep busy, but in a good way. I’m much happier when I’m productive, so doing 16 interviews in a day, that’s not good.

“I need to find a balance. I was away for five years, and now, it’s just a year since my last gig. I’ve learned that I enjoy songwriting more if I do it quicker. If I could get the gap between albums to three years, I’d be very happy.”

He says his music is his life, and he doesn’t have much of an existence away from it. He finds writing and recording such an immersive experience that he ends up being isolated from his friends for long stretches of time, and while this is fine, he does also find himself arriving on their doorsteps, uninvited, eager for someone to hang out with, whether they want to or not.

“I never have a plan, I just turn up. I try to keep that dialled down a bit, but I can be quite nomadic,” he says.

Self-examination is something he says he also has to watch out for, specifically too much of it.

“It’s similar with some comedians,” he says.

“They can often suffer from depression. To me, anxiety seems to go with the territory of writing songs.

My job, in a way, is putting words to feelings, but then I have to do interviews and I’m asked to explain it all again. It’s understandably hard on the psyche, but as long as I adhere to my rules about not talking about my songs, line by line, I’m OK.

“I have no fear about what I put in my songs, though. If I start leaving things out because I’m worried a journalist is going to ask me about it, then that’s going to have a detrimental effect.”

Next month, he will take Trick on a UK-wide tour, which includes two nights at London’s Brixton Academy. When he was starting out, Treays’ two ambitions were to release an album, and to play in Brixton.

But does he ever wish he wasn’t a solo artist, and that he had band members to share this with?

“I have to do everything,” says Treays. “But I don’t have to fall out with anyone. I just fall out with myself. I split up with myself all the time.”

n Jamie T’s album Trick is out now. He plays the O2 Academy Bournemouth on October 12.