total tommy announces new album ‘Trapezoid’ & shares title track

total tommy today announces second album Trapezoid – which will be released October 23rd on Play It AgainSam. She also today shares the title-track from the album – a song about embracing imperfection and finding strength in the small things. total tommy has received an avalanche of critical acclaim – from the likes of NME, i-D, DIY, Wonderland, The Times, Clash, DIY,Dork, Notion, The Line Of Best Fit. At radio there has been continuous support at BBC 6Music and BBC Radio 1. 

On the new single, Trapezoid, total tommy says – “Trapezoid is the title track of my album and was the song that unlocked the entire theme of the record. I love the double meaning of the word. Anatomically, it’s the smallest bone in the hand, and without it we wouldn’t have grip or dexterity. The smaller things make up the bigger picture kinda thing. It’s also a shape, parallel but tilted. I’ve always been meticulous with symmetry and things being perfect, but have slowly learnt to let go in the last year or so. I’m leaning into the off-kilter, and trying to let go a little more. For me personally, this meant accepting the things that make me who I am, and not forcing myself to change them.”

 
If there’s a lyric that epitomises the sophomore studio album of Melbourne-born, Sydney-based singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Jess Holt – aka total tommy – it is as follows: “Red eye, watching Reality Bites.” It’s a simple sentence, a descriptive statement, but one that offers a unique glimpse into its creator. This is an album in transit, dripping with references, lost amid a web of nostalgia and – as the title of the track that homes the above assertion, “Winona Forever”, conveys – Winona Ryder adoration.

Sonically, the record steps ever further into heavier, guitar-focused terrain. Deeper into distortion than the lighter, spritely, at times tender base of bruises, Trapezoid is far brasher and bolder in sound, plucking from grunge, emo, post-punk, pop punk and post-rock, even incorporating an electronic-tinged edge on cuts like “Bloodshot”. The difference in tones and ideas is encapsulated by the respective album closers – while the debut album ends on the softer, more subdued “Shark Attacks”, Trapezoid is antithetical, building up to a blistering, Brobdingnagian crescendo with the big-hitting closer, “Tailgate”. “It is just the ending I want people to hear,” she explains. “I just want it to be screaming in their face and it just felt like the right mood for the record. The album begins restrained and then it grows so much.”

 A maturation from the uncertainty of bruises into the intelligence and impact of Trapezoid, Holt is showing her many sided personal and artistic silhouette. The new album shows that it’s okay – good, even – to be a little lopsided.

1. Girl, Interrupted
2. Pretty Little Mouth
3. Trapezoid
4. Gutterball
5. Winona Forever
6. City Of Mannequins
7. Bloodshot
8. Nosedive
9. Tearjerker
10. Out Of Frame
11. Tailgate

Album pre-order – https://totaltommy.lnk.to/trapezoidalbum

Cover credit / Billy Zammit