total tommy has released new single ‘Tailgate’, the latest track from her forthcoming second album ‘Trapezoid’, due October 23 via Play It Again Sam.
The project of Melbourne-born, Sydney-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jess Holt, total tommy is pushing considerably deeper into guitar noise this time around. ‘Tailgate’ is a bruising piece of ’90s-indebted indie rock, with distortion and grunge replacing much of the lighter touch that surfaced across her debut album ‘bruises’.
Its origins are considerably stranger. The song grew out of an Uber journey to a wedding several years ago, during which Holt’s driver announced that she was a psychic and proceeded to deliver an unsolicited reading involving disturbing predictions about Holt’s family. The encounter stayed with her long afterwards, with ‘Tailgate’ becoming a way of reclaiming some control over a memory that continued to intrude.
It also makes sense that ‘Tailgate’ closes ‘Trapezoid’. Where ‘bruises’ ended quietly with ‘Shark Attacks’, its successor heads in precisely the opposite direction, gradually growing in intensity before finishing amid the noise and release of ‘Tailgate’.
‘Trapezoid’ is released October 23 via Play It Again Sam.
