Jamie T live at Finsbury Park by Sarah Louise Bennett
Jamie T headlined Finsbury Park on June 30th.
It’s taken a while – for reasons most likely his own (having recently expressed his notable disillusionment with the music industry) – but nearly 20 years into his career, Jamie T finally plays a massive outdoor show. Or, in his own words, ‘This is the first time we’ve played in the dark’.
Beforehand a stellar support bill of Willie J Healey, Hak Baker, Biig Piig, Kojey Radical and IDLES set the scene. In many ways IDLES and Jamie T are comfortable bedfellows; despite the decade-long difference between their debut albums both are pioneers of a game-changing sound, much-imitated but never bettered.
Their first show of 2023 on home soil (and apparently the only one), the Bristol quintet have been slaying crowds across the world, picking up a Grammy nomination along the way.
Fortunately the experiences have not dulled their potency, although it has perhaps taught them a trick or two. With nothing to lose and everything to gain, Joe Talbot and co take their time luring the crowd into the set, with a slow burning (then briefly raucous) Colossus and Car Crash before the stakes are raised for single Mr. Motivator, the first song much of the crowd recognise.
Thereafter it’s a lesson in how to bludgeon the crowd into submission. I’m Scum, Grounds and War are all breathlessly dispatched and the old tricks (which never fail) all come into play: Never Fight A Man With A Perm is interspersed with instructions for the crowd to go wild, while Danny Nedelko – in this time of Stop The Boats – feels like a pointed comment to Suella Braverman some 5 miles away, and Mark Bowen (looking fetching in a gold dress) crowd-surfs as Rottweiler pounds to a close.
The lad-heavy audience are perhaps slightly perplexed by the band, but they are long past caring and likely won many over. A band clearly enjoying themselves.
A tough act to follow, and wisely Jamie T doesn’t try to match them for power, at least initially. With machines well-oiled come 8.55pm, Treays wisely takes the atmosphere down, choosing to open with brand-new (and excellent) single Hippodrome, homages to South London filling the screens and no animosity from a well-wishing crowd.
Followed by the equally low-tempo (but shouty) Limits Lie, Treays and his band set their stall out: in opting not to (immediately) placate a very up-for-it crowd, this is a career-spanning set of which he is in complete control. After all, it is ‘the biggest moment of my life’.
In truth he looks a little overawed at first (as one would with 45,000 people staring at you) but soon settles into the rhythm of the show.
The crowd’s patience is paid off with the buoyant, bouncing Operation having the desired effect and Treays proceeds to cover all stages of his career, with new anthems like The Old Style Raiders and 90s Cars sounding just as good (if not better) than the more-established numbers, such as bopping Rabbit Hole or a skanking Salvador.
Yet it’s the more reflective material that better holds the attention: St George Wharf Tower arrives as light turns to dark, somehow making an open-air gig feel intimate, while the vulnerable Emily’s Heart (given its first airing in six years) and the anxious Don’t You Find showcase the tender side of Treays’ repertoire.
The bangers are for the masses, the rest for the true fans, but all unite as one for The Man’s Machine (‘soul, glass, concrete, and rubble/all we’ve got to keep us together’).
Even deep cuts like last year’s Between The Rocks and Dragon Bone (from 2016’s underrated Trick) are well-received before If You Got The Money closes the main set.
Returning with his infamous toothy grin and clad in a 1990’s Wimbledon shirt (this may be North, but he’ll always be South London), Treays unleashes an epic singalong of Back In The Game, a mighty Sheila (with the name of the capital screamed to an almost deafening level), a boisterous Sticks ‘n’ Stones and the irrepressible Zombie. Former Maccabee Hugo White joins the band for the latter, capping what Treays refers to as ‘a family affair’.
With little time for nostalgia but plenty for revelry, a damp Finsbury Park surely represents a high point in a career full of them.
