Total Tommy – “Bruises” (Released 29th November 2024)

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//Pias//

£23.99 – 1xLP

Total tommy’s anticipated debut album.

The last few years for Jess Holt, the Sydney-based artist better known as total tommy, have been the kind where everything turns on its head and you come out of the other side a near-unrecognisable person. Even when the change is for the better, at some point you have to take stock of the bruises you’ve accumulated and the ones you’ve left on others too.

Holt excels at heady, bubbly songs like “Plus One,” a Garbage-esque romp which, as Holt puts it, is “about sex, that’s all”; and “Girlfriend,” a playful and joyful ode to the obnoxious throes of new love. Yet there’s a beating pulse of vulnerability underscoring the album. On “Losing Out,” a powerful, heartsick track, she exorcises her anger at somebody who took advantage of her. “Stuck inside your house ‘cause you’re too scared to show your face / Haven’t told your wife and kids about the mess you made,” she sneers. “I’d delayed writing about this for a few months, but as soon as I started everything was super visceral and the lyrics formed in about fifteen minutes,” she says. “The first day demo we had was really special because it was so raw; I didn’t want to touch it because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to replicate what we captured on that day. But then I got [McDonald] to play live drums on the track and it lifted it to a whole other dimension.”

Meanwhile, on the album’s quietest ballad, ‘Ribs’, she heartbreakingly addresses a friend in a battle with anorexia: “I will always listen, answer when you call / Never let you fade out,” she promises. The heart of the album lies in “Adeline,” the last song that Holt wrote for it and the one that finally made it feel complete. Here, she addresses her teenage self in her worst moments, and vows that things will get better: “I need to remind you / You don’t have to do this anymore.” In true total tommy fashion, the song is quietly, overwhelmingly stirring; it feels like being struck at some random moment, maybe when you’re a little intoxicated with some people you love, that you’ve come a long way. Meaningfully, she co-wrote this one with her wife. “It was such a special experience — she’s got this way of calling out the bullshit,” Holt smiles.

There are a lot of different sides of total tommy on display across ‘bruises’: a romantic, a hedonist, a lost soul, a wise friend, an asshole, a sweetheart. What ties it all together is a newfound confidence; a sense of contentment and belief in exactly who she is, the kind that only comes from seeing what’s left after everything’s uprooted. “That was a really big time,” she says, looking back on the two years across which she wrote these songs. “I grew so much, I learnt so much about myself; I mostly feel like an adult now.” But these songs were never meant for navelgazing; they were meant to be played to a crowd, loud and with abandon. bruises is a document of blood, sweat, dilated pupils, warm flesh — aliveness.