January 2016 will not be remembered as a good month for British pop music. However, those feeling shell-shocked at the loss of one of contemporary music’s greatest innovators might be feeling a bit better by the end of February. February 19th sees the release of Jack Garratt’s debut album Phase, and five days later he’ll be onstage at the Brit Awards Ceremony receiving the Critics’ Choice award, whose previous winners include James Bay and Adele. Needless to say one award maketh not a Bowie-successor. But for the first time in a while British pop has produced a sound that confuses and excites in equal measure.

First, a confession: I am not interested by a lot of modern pop music. I know I am in the minority, I know I am a fossil. I appreciate the technical ability and hard work of everyone in the charts, I just don’t like their music very much. Garratt excites even me, and a comparison with the other nominees at the Brit Awards explains why. Years and Years put out some great synth pop, but I couldn’t tell you what puts them ahead of M83 or Passion Pit. Catfish and the Bottlemen’s frenetic indie rock is really good, but I’ve still got all my Bloc Party/The Kooks albums so I probably won’t buy theirs. I can’t be the only one who thought Take Me Home by Jess Glynne was an Adele track the first time it came on. Garratt, on the other hand, just doesn’t sound like anyone else. Or rather, Garratt sounds like more other people than anyone else. Listening to the title track on Garratt’s debut single Water is an experience akin to going to a house party and gradually noticing the entire Hollywood A-list is there. When it opens with a nice echoey guitar riff, you’re fairly confident you know what you’re in for. A minimal hip-hop drumbeat and subby bass are the first surprises. But then the gospel backing vocals turn up, then the Eighties power-riff, then the piano solo, and suddenly you’re wondering how on earth your mate knows all these celebrities. The amazing thing is that Garratt has somehow synthesised all these ingredients into a consistent style. He fuses an intensely modern, digital sound with the old-school groove and lyrical dexterity that so often escapes pop music these days, particularly at the more electronic end.

No surprise that in recent interviews he’s listed Stevie Wonder and Tom Waits as some of his most significant influences. What’s more, his music is infectiously catchy. Worry has a chorus refrain that is harder to get out of your system than a January cold. This distances Garratt in an important way from probably his closest musical relative, James Blake. Garratt is as inventive and downright bizarre, but feels significantly more accessible. All this makes for a very particular live show. Garratt holds it all together himself, the ultimate 21st-century one-man band: vocals, guitar, keys, drum/bass pad, the whole nine yards. If people were impressed in 2012 when Ed Sheeran first fronted a concert with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal (and we were), then Garratt has upped the stakes. This begs the important question: can he rock out? Short answer: yes. For weirdos like me who would rather see Matt Bellamy power-sliding across centre-stage than David Guetta fiddling behind a bank of computers, Garratt is your man. His performance might be confined to small spaces, but it’s a little typhoon of soulful synth-rock.

That said, will he keep it that way as the venues get bigger? Or will he recruit a band to keep things ticking over and so give him a bit more freedom? He seems like the type who might not as a point of pride: only time will tell. It’s too early for wild predictions of success, but Jack Garratt is certainly surprising. He is original not because he owes nothing to what has come before, but because of the diversity of his debts. He is the only inhabitant of the intersection of a Venn diagram linking Tom Waits, Ed Sheeran, AlunaGeorge and Bastille. He’ll combine the strange and the familiar in interesting ways. If, like me, you had stopped paying attention to British pop music, now might be a good time to start again.