- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Fortunately, he hasn't matured out of his core strengths: his vitality, his expressiveness, and his knack for twisting the vagaries of everyday life for urban youth into material for songs.
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UncutA provocative and inventive second album. [Sep 2009, p.96]
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It’s the slower, acoustic ballads that may be Kings & Queens’ biggest surprise, and to which listeners may respond most strongly, one way or the other. The trouble is, Treay’s no pop singer; he retreats into a mumble, slurring his words.
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MojoAn unshamedly fun album. [Sep 2009, p.104]
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Where he once seemed like a busking Rodney Trotter, he’s now left the loser affectations behind and is more like Del Boy, a man aiming for bigger and better things and becoming a national institution in the process. Lovely jubbly.
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It's a second album that builds on the success of the debut, expanding the sound without losing any of what made Jamie T so interesting in the first place.
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Under The RadarKings And Queens never manages to exceed its D.I.Y. entropy. [Fall 2009, p.72]
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Whether he's actually been "with Louie in the shooting gallery" or been stuck listening to "baby next door screaming all evening" doesn't matter--what does is his gripping way of telling a tale.
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Kings and Queens is a resounding success. Okay, maybe it's a tried and true formula that Jamie T and Ben Bones have created, but their textured, layered songs each have something new to offer upon every listen, and they've mastered the art to near perfection.
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The collection as a whole has a transitional feel, as though Jamie T is still finding his way between the two poles of his primary inspiration. Yet with his propensity for both engaging storytelling and hooks, he's too talented not to figure it all out in spectacular fashion.
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This album is a stylized, slightly-paranoid romp sure to pluck the heartstrings of anyone who has ever lived life with reckless abandon.
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The disc is packed with tightly crafted modern pop, and seamlessly melds the artist’s myriad influences.
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This record can't claim such a free-spirited conception as its predecessor, but that's actually to its credit as not a moment rests idle or is flung in on a whim, every track connects like a pool cue to the back of the head in a bit of Friday night pub rough and tumble.