CHRIS T-T, the pop star, has been retired 10 years. Chris Thorpe-Tracey, the person, is still going strong, and is still firmly ensconced in music. You might have seen him in his band leader role, recording and performing with former Carter USM frontman Jim Bob; noted his production work on the new Tom Williams song you heard on the radio; or read his Border Crossing newsletter, in which he wangs on intellectually about culture, music, and the state we’re in.

But for the autumn of 2025, the T-T version of Chris is officially back, for a “short-term, slightly awkward re-emergence,” taking in a few festival and radio appearances, a sold-out gig at the 100 club, and the re-release of two of his very best, exceedingly critically acclaimed albums, 9 Red Songs and London is Sinking, on vinyl.

London is Sinking is a psychedelic pop masterpiece — “almost a concept album, but not quite” — following a young girl’s journey down the Thames. 9 Red Songs, which came out 20 years ago this autumn, is very different: “an overtly stridently lefty protest record, my first attempt at a folky-style record.”

Both albums are great, but London is Sinking is your correspondent’s favourite. It sits in this perfect point between beautiful, lovelorn songwriting, extraordinary imagery, tight production, and wild flights of fancy. It also contains, as Chris puts it, “an undercurrent of unease and violence” — an undercurrent which was to come to a head on the next record.

“It’s the first album I make with the confidence of having had some success,” says Chris. “I knew some of these songs will get on the radio. I also was in a new relationship, which turned out to be with my life partner. So I was making London is Sinking with this other new, amazingly emotional, positive thing in my life.”

Then came the 7/7 bombings in London, and life imitating incomplete art. Chris’s third London album, for which London Is Sinking holds clues and “Easter Eggs,” was to be set after “an absolute catastrophe... literally with bombs on the Tube and the buses.” Reality had overtaken the nascent fiction. The album had to be significantly rewritten.

9 Red Songs came out in the interim, and won Thorpe-Tracey a whole new audience with its direct, political songwriting and extremely relatable fury at the state of the world. Which songs does Chris think have maintained their resonance?

“Tony’s Heart is a big, long extended joke basically saying he hasn’t got a heart. With the benefit of 20 years of hindsight — I mean it’s correct! — it’s weak tea as a political song.

“A Plague On Both Your Houses is about Israel committing atrocities in Gaza. So it still feels relevant. Though I think the song “both sides” the issue in a way that I wouldn’t do now. It’s almost got a sense of the civilians’ neutrality that I don’t feel so much now, so in a way that’s dated it.

“There are others that do feel really powerful, especially songs about that general feeling of disaffection. Simmer Down, Simmer Down — another song about violence — feels really powerful. So interestingly, it’s the stuff that’s about party politics that doesn’t feel so relevant.

“Also the opening track, Bankrupt, predicts a financial crash, which I was very smug about once it happened, although it didn’t make my life economically any easier.”

Another case, there, of the songwriter as soothsayer.

There’s an interesting disconnect between Chris Thorpe-Tracey, the musician, writer and artist, and Chris T-T, the pop star whom he retired almost a decade ago. Why is he still unsure about being Chris T-T when the music is this good?

“I mean, there’s a really brutal way to look at that, which is just I didn’t get as successful as I wanted to be. And that made me hate the artist because he hadn’t achieved what I thought he deserved.”

You get the sense, though, Thorpe-Tracey has unfinished business in terms of releasing his own songs. “If I wanted to go back into music and release new material of my own, it has to be a new persona, new sound and new identity.

“And then just in the last week or two I’ve been thinking that’s bullshit as well, that’s just as bad, so I’ve sort of gone back to square one because Chris T-T is so close to my actual name!

“I’m in a quite difficult place with that because I do miss touring and I miss playing. That said I don’t miss touring or playing as Chris T-T.”

He remains ever the awkward bastard, which is what makes these albums and these songs so singularly brilliant. Go buy, go see, while you still can.

London Is Sinking and 9 Red Songs are available to pre-order now. 

Chris T-T plays Brighton October 25, and the 100 Club, London on November 15. For tickets and info see bandsintown.com