Way back in the summer of 2003, some bloke in a bedroom in North West Kent presses publish for the first issue of a new music blog called Joy (back then the zine part was in the URL but not the site name). Amongst the articles on this nascent journal was a review of that year’s Truck Festival in Steventon, Oxford, including a write-up of indie-folk artist Chris T-T, praised in clumsily constructed sentences for “Songs delivered with passion and feeling, which will have left a lot of people with something to think about.“
A little over 22 years later the same bloke sits, coincidentally about 22 miles from his original perch, in South East London and attempts to construct a marginally more eloquent introduction to Chris T-T’s return, albeit brief, to the music scene after an eight year hiatus.
From our earliest days until he hung up his guitar in 2017, Chris was a regular within these pages; a fixture of the Joyzine Advent Calendar and a regular guest on both our radio show and our live events. Those who came across his records or ever saw him live will have fond memories of his wit, politically charged lyrics and of course his excellent tunes. Many of those came on the records London Is Sinking and 9 Red Songs, both of which are receiving a vinyl release for the first time more than 20 years later via Border Crossing Records on 14th November. And if that’s not cause enough for jubilation, Chris will also be playing live shows in Brighton and London alongside these reissues.
We caught up with him to find out more.
After several years away, you’re back for a few live shows and reissues of two of your albums – how did this all come about?
Back when I made these records, I wasn’t a ‘vinyl’ artist, 2003 was still deep in the CD era, so none of my albums came out on vinyl and I didn’t care about that, it didn’t cross my mind until years later.
I’d never owned a record player — my wife Rifa had (still has) a solid 80s and 90s indie record collection from her youth, but they were in a cupboard.
Only recently, years after giving up Chris T-T, we bought a decent turntable and sound system and I’ve become an annoying vinyl nerd. Perhaps it’s a pre-requisite for getting old. Anyway, now it’s the main way I listen to music, so inevitably I’ve got obsessed with having copies of my old albums on 12” to play at home.
That’s what kicked off a reissue project. The question is: given a modest but still existing Chris T-T fanbase, can I make reissues, proper decent looking and sounding 12” copies of each of my old albums, without losing money? Can I sell enough limited editions to folks who’ll appreciate them, that it all pays for itself?
My friends Marc and Emma run this brilliant ethical band merchandising business, The Pop Group, and they fronted production costs and are running fulfilment for the mail order, because they’re already set up to do that professionally, at very high quality. They’re doing all the real work.
I’ll also say, my decision — back in 2017 — to destroy all the T-T mailing list data has made it a lot harder to reach people!
How did it feel revisiting the albums and looking back at pictures, reviews and footage from that time?
It’s been bittersweet nostalgia, re-reading old press and shit. In 2003 people really, really liked me. Good for the ego, but also a little sad. I still believed I was going to be mainstream successful, in a strange sort of way. Though London Is Sinking is my fourth album, everything still felt like ‘early career rush’. London Is Sinking enabled me to quit my dayjob and go full time as a touring artist, and move to Brighton.
By the end of 2003, my life looked completely different to the start of that year.
I think the production and sound of London Is Sinking stands up great, especially given its small budget. Parts of it sound huge, and it all sounds like a much more luxuriously recorded album than it actually was. That’s down to Jon Clayton who produced it, who I still work with all the time, 22 years later.
9 Red Songs sounds a bit more dated, partly because it was deliberately made fast and loose, a lot of first takes. Like, ‘Huntsman Comes A’Marchin’ the original studio version was literally the second or third time I’d ever sung it through, because stupidly I believed it was authentically ‘folk’. But of course that’s not ‘folk’, it’s just not working hard enough!
I mean, I’m still proud of 9 Red Songs, it’s got killer songs. But if I had the time again I’d take more care, especially vocals.
Also, the classic thing happens, when you’re middle-aged and looking back at old photos. In 2003 I felt like the ugliest, fattest human in the world trying to be a singer. But looking at those images now, obviously in real life I was super-cute, unusual with a stupid goatee maybe, but not at all horrible looking. The distance of age brings some healthy objectivity to our perspective.
Looking back at London Is Sinking‘s original release in 2003, where do you think it fitted into the music scene of the time and what about it has meant it’s been able to stand the test of time well enough to warrant a reissue?
That’s a great question Paul, but a tough one.
London Is Sinking felt like a big success, it was intensely acclaimed, like when Sunday Times put it high up in their pop albums of the year, between Outkast and Dizzee Rascal. But then something didn’t quite follow up, like, there wasn’t a big step up afterwards. I didn’t join any establishment or cliques of bands or anything.
Partly, the label took no singles off London Is Sinking, which did my head in because I thought it was full of singles. Releasing a single back then meant a physical format release, so that cost money. And though I had critical heat through the autumn, there wasn’t anything to pin it to, to throw at radio or TV or whatever. And no videos. Really, I just had no resources put into anything to expand on underground and critical success.
With the benefit of hindsight, actually it was already too late: the end of my tilt at any kind of ‘big’ indie rock career, though I didn’t notice. Two years earlier, in 2001 after my previous album The 253 did really well, that’s when I should’ve jumped ship, scored myself a new, bigger record label and proper management. But I didn’t remotely have the savvy. I think by 2003, actually I’d already missed the boat without realising.
So, in terms of warranting a reissue, I don’t really believe my albums do, not in a commercial sense!
The songs have lasted for people, right? That’s the big positive. This coming November, Frank Turner is releasing a ‘rarities’ collection called The Next Ten Years, and he’s included his cover of ‘Giraffes #1’ that he taped in the mid 2010s. My original version of that song is on London Is Sinking.
With my reissues, we’re only pressing a few hundred copies of each LP. I don’t need the vanity kick of seeing my LPs in record shops, except maybe a couple of specific shops that I care about, but not generally. I’m not trying to grow a career or build anything. So if we sell out on pre-orders (which looks possible) and they never appear in shops, that’s fine to me.
Since I never got mainstream famous, or had a real hit, there’s nothing tangible to hang reissues on, except some people already liking the songs.
Were there any bands or artists back then that were on a similar wavelength to you or that you felt a sort of kinship with?
There was a bit of a scene around the label I was signed to, with bands like Candidate, The Broken Family Band, and Animals That Swim. Tim Victor’s Folk Orchestra. Apart from that it was meeting bands on the road. Fonda 500 in Hull who I adored. The scene around Truck Festival and Truck Records, run by the band Goldrush in south Oxfordshire.
But there’s another mistake I made at the time: I was never socially gregarious enough. Always awkward, I didn’t dive into cliques or scenes.
Thinking of the musical landscape into which the album is being reissued, what has changed since its original release?
It’s far more than just format changes, the whole music world has profoundly, seismically, shifted since 2003. It’s totally, totally different now.
I’d argue that music itself has ceased to be at the heart of what the music industry is, pushed aside by iconoclasm and branding, and the generation of online moments to capture attention, whether that’s shortform videos on Tik Tok, or manufactured beef, or in the elaborate staging of live shows, guest appearances, controversy, etc.
Perhaps there’s a Gen Z and Alpha pushback against that, right now, with the re-emergence (in some corners) of scratchy genuine live band scenes — we’ve got an exciting nascent grassroots band-based scene in Brighton & Hove at the moment — the best it’s been since the descent from the early 2000s I’d say — but we’re not a typical city. And I don’t think it’ll ever come back in a mass market sense, just in an underground sense, out of which occasional successes can emerge.
I’ve come to terms with Chris T-T music being essentially unimportant, more widely than the small collection of people it impacted. So my reissues aren’t attempting to engage with the wider industry, or the cultural landscape, they’re meant to be a precious, small thing, just for people out there who like me, and liked the music. And still like the music. And possess record players. That’s very niche!
Who are the current bands that you admire? Are there any in whom you can hear or feel a similar spirit to what you were trying to achieve with London Is Sinking?
I have a few answers to this. My current favourite band is probably Geese and I adore Cameron Winter’s solo LP as well. He could be a generational talent.
The song-based type artists who got me back into music over the past few years have been Americans: Big Thief, Waxahatchee and boygenius, more than any others.
That said, mostly these days my taste leans hard into late night electronic pop and club things. Folks like Charli XCX, Lorde, Rosalia, Dua, Caroline Polachek, Billie Eilish, occasionally k-pop though it’s toxic as fuck, sometimes Twigs when she’s not annoying, I also love, say, both Holly Humberstone and now Chloe Qisha. Then also Four Tet, Amelie Lens, Floating Points, Caribou, Jon Hopkins, that sort of thing sitting between club music and modern composition. Day to day, I’m listening to that, rather than almost all alt/rock bands. Brat was my favourite LP of last year by far.
I was floored by what boygenius achieved, both musically and culturally, waking up a whole young audience. Chappell Roan for example couldn’t have had her rise, without boygenius opening doors the year before. And earlier than that, you could argue Taylor wouldn’t have gone in the Folklore direction without Phoebe Bridgers opening that door too. I guess Bridgers has hugely influenced young western pop culture.
Trying to make a connection back to what I was doing… I reckon the storytelling on London Is Sinking lives maybe closer to theatrical singers like Self Esteem or CMAT than to conventional rock bands.
But then 9 Red Songs is a whole different biscuit, more relevant probably, despite my criticisms of the sound, since it’s part of the beginnings of the folk/punk thing that emerged from anti-folk and was taken up by Frank Turner and others around him, in turn influencing a generation songwriters. Which gave me the second half of my Chris T-T career, from 2007 onwards. Yada yada.
What have you got going on at the moment/coming up soon?
After the 100 Club show, I’ll put Chris T-T back in the box in the attic, gaffer-taped shut with “retired” written on it in thick black sharpie. “do not disturb”.
I’m enjoying producing records, just finished a new Tom Williams album called Out Of Nowhere, released in November. I’m super-proud of it, Tom’s songs and singing are incredible, I could bang on about those sessions for ages, but you can interview Tom about that if you want. It’s a very personal record of his family stuff, uplifting and heartbreaking. Musically, it has more space than Tom’s previous albums, focuses on his voice, with some sublime understated accompaniment — the energy was gorgeous.
I’m about to start making a collaborative record with MJ Hibbett.
I’ve got two non-fiction book proposals floating around, so I’m waiting to hear about those, I did the first draft of a book called At The End Of The World, A Piano. I’ll leave it to your imagination what that’s like! My current dream is to sell some non-fiction, to write long-form professionally.
I still play piano for Jim Bob, with my old band the Hoodrats as his backing band. We’ve done that for six years now and made five albums with Jim (though obviously I’ve worked with Jim way longer than that). Jim tours a perfect amount for me — enough to properly enjoy the adventures on the road and get into it, but not enough it starts to become a lifestyle. I often wish he’d do more shows, but reflecting on it, it’s better to leave us yearning for more, than all sick of each-other.
We’re all pretty old, so it has to be comfortable. That’s expensive!
A bittersweet thing is, Jim seems to have given up on pushing into Europe, though he’s bigger in the UK than he’s ever been since Carter days. Jim can sell out Shepherds Bush Empire, do 2,000 tickets in London no problem and 600+ tickets in cities around the UK, but still, post-Brexit the cost and logistics of getting a band into Europe to re-activate the fanbase in places Carter USM were big in the 90s (which is everywhere, really) without a big company to back it all, it’s just an unrealistic slog.
But I’d absolutely love to find a viable reason or context to tour Europe again. Those were the greatest experiences, moreso than North America, even before the steepening decline of the USA. We still travel across and around Europe overland a fair bit for leisure.
We asked Chris to pick five songs from 2003 and five from the last 12 months.
Ooh this is fun. Right.
2003 favourites
Decemberists — ‘The Bachelor and the Bride’
I saw them live in NYC in autumn 2002, when I was there playing muy first US gigs, having a thrilling adventure. Early Decemberists (Rachel Blumberg still drumming) were incredible in some small Brooklyn club. But also, reaching back to my feelings at the time, experiencing it, I realise now I was very naive for someone in his late twenties, my memories all have the blurry hue and excited texture of a teenager.
The Broken Family Band — ‘Twelve Eyes Of Evil’
Basically they invented UK indie/Americana years before posh scenesters like the Mumfords came along. Everyone who knows BFB’s music will agree they ought to have been giant disgusting superstars. We were label-mates, but the dazzling songwriting still made me envious.
The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster — ‘Psychosis Safari’
Driving, grimy swamp-rock from Brighton. The music scene when I first arrived here was just buzzing, this lot, Sea Power, Clearlake, Electric Soft Parade, many others, incredibly fertile local industry. I was so intimidated that even though people were welcoming me in, for ages I pretended I was still a London artist. Stupid really.
Beyoncé — ‘Crazy In Love’
Perfection.
Was tempted to include White Stripes ’Seven Nation Army’ just for that riff but it’s got to be
Yeah Yeah Yeahs — ‘Maps’
It’s unfathomable that some NYC hipster indie band could produce something so sacred and eternal and soaring, without compromising their underlying sound. I wasn’t actually a Yeah Yeah Yeahs fan, I’ve never really dug into their stuff — just this one song sings out, right?
Current favourites…
Cameron Winter — ‘Drinking Age’
The version live on Jimmy Kimmel with brass coming in halfway through is my favourite, except on the video they’ve muted out the word ’shit’. But apart from that it’s a jawdropper.
Jasmine.4.t — ‘Woman’
Absolutely beautiful expression of deep trans truth. I saw her sing this at on the Left Field at Glastonbury and couldn’t stop crying, her debut LP is beautifully made with boygenius producing, so you get Julien Baker guitar on it and their harmonies too.
Self Esteem — ’The Deep Blue Okay’
I wasn’t that taken by the latest Self Esteem album but as always her live show was outstanding and this closing track sticks out for me, it’s a perfect ending.
The Beths — ‘Metal’
I always think The Beths work on two levels: like, they’re an upbeat simple Kiwi indie pop band, but then people might miss the heady depths and poetry of Elizabeth’s writing. Their new album feels awfully sad and even scared, so much so I can’t listen to it as often as I’d like, musically. It’s interesting that medicalised sadness is so different (and so much rarer) in song to plain old emotional sadness.
Geese — ’Taxes’
Getting Killed is my album of 2025 so far. I’m not going to get to see them in London, because tickets went so fast. I appreciate that ’Taxes’ is probably their most mainstream palatable moment but I adore the proggy, even bluesy further out there songs too. Still, this is one soaring heartlifting motherfucker of a jam. Again, the version on Kimmel is special. ’Taxes’ is a production built around a specific, precise moment, when the song opens up. Before that, it’s slippery, sometimes barely there (especially on the video, where they just have almost nothing until the great unfolding). But once it’s in, it’s golden, a peerless descending, chiming riff, with Cameron over the top.
London Is Sinking and 9 Red Songs will be released on vinyl via Border Crossing on 14th November, pre-order your copy here
Chris T-T briefly un-retires for two live shows: Saturday 25th October at The Hope & Ruin in Brighton as part of the LollapaGooza 3 all-dayer (tickets here), and 15th November at The 100 Club in London (sold out)
Chris T-T: Substack / Website / Instagram / Bandcamp
Interview by Paul Maps
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