GIG ALERT: Thursday, 6th of August - Chippo Hotel, WE CAN RAGE Vol 2 - feat total tommy, Cherry Rype, Stirr and binsad
total tommy lets the edges stay crooked, like a trapezoid, which is the newest titular track off their album coming out on the 23rd of October. There is something slightly wrong about a trapezoid. Not actually, literally wrong, obviously. It’s close to a perfectly shaped rectangle that has deliberately slanted edges, like a plane whacked the edge of a building and it never fell down.
That is Trapezoid, Jess Holt’s incoming second album from her project total tommy. Holt says she is learning how to leave things a little crooked and imperfect. “I like Trapezoid because it’s tilted. It’s not symmetrical.”
I did my homework and Jess is someone who has described themself as meticulous and prone to over-analysis, so this album is really a true exercise in resisting the impulse to make everything perfectly square.
“This whole theme was me trying to just go with it and not over-analyse - just kind of go with what feels good.”
Much of the record was tracked in London over two weeks, using live drums and live instruments. Holt had written the songs beforehand, but the compressed studio schedule left little room for endless revision, which meant they had to trust the energy of a take. For this album, there was no time to pull every sound apart, inspect it and place it back under the perfect lighting.
Holt was optimising for the feeling - “Does it feel good right now? Do I want to still listen to this the next day?” They did. Then, once the album was finished, they put it away and stopped listening to for 6 months because she got too close to it.
The record contains 11 tracks, including its closing song, “Tailgate”, which was written after the album had essentially already been locked.
“We had one day left, and we were in a pretty good spot,” Holt explains. “I was like, ‘Let’s just try to write one more.’”
It became their favourite song on the album. Or second. It is possible everything is bound to become a favourite if the calibre of the 3 released tracks continues across the album.
We talk about how her track, “Winona Forever” came together under an even more intense deadline. Holt was due to leave for the airport and had roughly four hours to start the song, finish it and get a demo out. The song began with an image of Winona Ryder riding a bike through the city. Holt was homesick and feeling existential - Ryder appeared small against the scale of everything around her.
“She looks so small in the scheme of the city,” Holt says. Ryder also seems to represents a kind of self-possession that appears throughout our conversation. Holt had been watching interviews and films from across the actor’s career, drawn to how she becomes different versions of herself.
“She’s so effortlessly cool and knows herself,” - “Watching her embody characters is crazy, because it would be like having a second skin or a shadow side.”
I find this comment funny because I’m not sure Holt realises she is a Winona. The reinvention of Essie Holt into total tommy. They were releasing electronic pop music under the name Essie Holt prior to shedding that skin. It was a project connected to another period of their life, before they had come out, before moving to Sydney from Melbourne and before returning to the rock music they had loved growing up.
Leaving Essie Holt behind was not a huge and dramatic rupture. Holt had already stopped releasing music under the name by the time the new songs began taking shape. Coming out was easy they admit. Moving to Sydney loosened attachments. Some old friendships fell away, which Holt now understands as necessary. That there were high school friends that needed to go, who were living very suburban, straight life(s).
The earliest released total tommy track, “Microdose”, is still the project’s sonic blueprint. Holt had written other songs by the time it came out, but chose it as the first release because it clearly announced what total tommy was going to be. “It feels like the sonic DNA of the project to me. That song unlocked a lot. I landed on that and I was like, this is what Tommy is.”
The track is built around Holt’s tendency to approach people, interests and new obsessions with complete all consuming intensity. “If I commit to a person or a new hobby or something like that, I give it everything - or then I’ll just completely quit. There’s no moderation most of the time for me.” I think, therefore “Microdose” is a slightly misleading title. I realise this in retrospect only. Holt does not want the controlled amount. They want the whole thing immediately, which is actually reflected in how whole and complete each track is. You get it all, and then some.
There is a bit of an all or nothing instinct here - and paired with a working life, it means Holt has to be intentional about writing. Like many independent musicians, Holt works a full-time day job. The process for them happens in concentrated blocks, where they take time away to write and create. Intentional. With deadlines. Holt admits they might disappear for five years between releases without them.
“I’d be very, very slow.”
Sydney, however, has given total tommy something else. Here Holt has found a city made up of smaller scenes and temporary spaces - 3rd spaces - for communities to converge, like house shows, garages, rooftops. A bunch of rooms and spaces that were not necessarily built for live music.
“The DIY scene here is amazing,” they say. “People playing in garages and rooftops and just unique gig spaces.”
Their wife CP, who makes electronic music, helped introduce them to the city’s wider musical ecosystem. “She was such a good crux to introduce me to the scene here,” Holt says. “She took me to so many gigs and really opened up my eyes to so many corners of the world that I’d never come across.”
Holt does not only want total tommy’s live shows to function as a place where songs are performed correctly - they want the room to become useful to the people inside it. “I want people to feel really empowered and confident in their own voice,” they say. “And just to feel really safe in the space as well, and hopefully make friends.”
There is also rage.
“Losing Out”, from total tommy’s first album, came from a working relationship in which Holt’s trust was broken and their boundaries crossed. It is one of the project’s most cutting songs, sharpened by the line “Haven’t told your wife and kids about the mess you made.”
The details belong to a specific situation, but listeners have repeatedly brought Holt their own stories. “My situation is so specific. But I’ve actually had a few people with that song that have told me their stories.” When the band plays it live, the original event no longer entirely controls the song. Holt channels whatever is happening in their life at that moment and empties the remaining energy in their body into it.
The new album appears to push that physical intensity even further. “Tailgate” grows so large towards its ending that people encouraged Holt to tame it. They did not. “Some days I’d be like, ‘I feel exhausted after listening to this song, really gets in your eardrums in a big way.” The record ends in screeching guitars and live, the final section becomes a saxophone solo. How explosive this will be to see live.
I’m sure it would have been tidier to pull it back. More controlled. More symmetrical. But total tommy's Trapezoid does not seem interested in the perfect version of the shape. They want the slant, and keeping ending loud and is doing the thing that feels right, which is more important than the thing that looks correct.