Jamie T @ Apollo, Manchester, 20 Oct

You wait years for a new Jamie T record, and then two come along at once. That isn't, of course, the sort of account that's accurate enough to earn a place in the authorised history of South London's Jamie Treays, if ever one were to be written. But when he took a five-year leave of absence between 2009's Kings and Queens and 2014's Carry On the Grudge, fans were entitled to be concerned by the radio silence.

Fast forward a couple of years, and already he's turned round LP4, Trick. Here's the god's honest truth about it: half sees T on vintage form, aiming to channel the rough and ready folk poet of yesteryear rather than Grudge's dead-serious songwriter. The other half devolves into wanton experimentation, almost all of which is ill-advised.

Thankfully, in front of a capacity crowd at his biggest-ever Manchester show, he gets that out of his system nice and early: the choppy rap of Solomon Eagle is part of the opening salvo, as is Tescoland – think pre-watershed Sleaford Mods.

Any review of one of T's live shows should bring up the composition of the crowd, and it's easy to come away with the impression that as many of them are there to behave like football hooligans as those who simply like his records. Still, they stir up quite the atmosphere. That's to be expected when T's well-drilled band – the same that backed him on the Grudge tour – tear through the likes of Stella and If You Got the Money, but it's refreshing to see the audience go similarly wild for the less accessible likes of Tinfoil Boy and Don't You Find. That should give T confidence; his fans, at face value, seemed less than enthralled by the Trick material, but he might yet get them next time – assuming he doesn't do another disappearing act.