“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” So runs the famous quote from The Go-Between, and it’s a sentiment that runs through Jamie T‘s sixth album. As those heady days of the mid-2000s, when Sheila and her mate Stella DO feel like a foreign country – a whole other world, in fact.

Ghosts (100 Days Of Morning) sees Jamie Treays look back at those days – from the opening track 3310 (named after the Nokia mobile phone that was ubiquitous before the iPhone appeared) to lyrical references to Lily Allen, Tracey Emin, Brian Harvey and Goldie, it sometimes feels like you’ve been transported back in time.

Although it’s a more reflective album, Treays hasn’t cut down on the manic energy that’s become his trademark over the last 20 years. Indeed, songs like Waist 36 Leg 32 and the aforementioned 3310 sound like they could have been lifted straight from his debut Panic Prevention – driving guitars, frantic beats and that half-sung, half spoken vocal. Waist 36 Leg 32 is particularly good, a furious take on consumerism and growing old, with a chorus that’s almost made to be shouted along to.

Unusually though for a Jamie T album, it’s the more wistful moments that define this record. The Won is beautifully atmospheric, a reverb heavy look back at how sometimes things don’t turn out as planned – “life’s a losing game, and not everything works out” runs one particularly bittersweet line. Caught Cheating is another arresting moment, full of fingerpicked guitar and increasingly impassioned vocals.

The title track, Ghosts, is actually a cover version of The Jam song but, unlike the version on The Gift, Treays has dropped the horns and handclaps and sped the tempo up. Yet the song’s innate sense of melancholy remains – a trick that he also pulls on Chelsea Girls, a more danceable song, but one that looks back on the days when British pop culture was viewed though a tabloid lens. Names like Martine McCutcheon, Donna Air (“breaking young hearts since 1993”) and gangster turned celebrity Dave Courtney are dropped through Treays’ slurred delivery over a beat that’s reminiscent of Leftfield.

One of those symbols of pop culture, Damon Albarn, has a co-songwriting credit on Cocktail, and it’s one of the best songs on the album – a bouncy anthem with rapped vocals, abrasive guitars and a general sound that inevitably recalls Gorillaz. Even here, on one of the more obviously accessible tracks, there’s a heaviness that hangs over proceedings, with the spectre of ageing again casting a poignant shadow on the song.

It’s the closing track, Tallahassee that really sticks in the memory though. Sampling Canadian folk artist Leif Vollebekk‘s song of the same name, it becomes a spoken-word, stream-of-consciousness rant which references Lily Allen (“the soundtrack to your university years”), Tracey Emin’s bed, and “Liam Howlett driving round Romford in a Ferrari Testarossa”. It’s a track about imposter syndrome – “I’m nothing like them, I’m just a plagiarist” – but still manages to sound uplifting as it builds to a climax.

While many of Jamie T’s contemporaries have disappeared or moved onto the nostalgia circuit, Ghosts (100 Days of Morning) sees Treays still sounding contemporary and vital. It’s the sound of a man looking back on his past but not being trapped by it – and an album that avoids wallowing in nostalgia, choosing instead to understand how that history shaped its creator.