Today, one of 2024’s breakout Australian indie-rock acts total tommy releases the raucous earworm cut, “Amsterdam“, lending a final glimpse into her debut album bruises before its release this Friday, November 29 via Play It Again Sam.
A guitar-driven ride that captures the chaos of a night in its namesake city, total tommy candidly says of today’s new single; “I wrote this song in London last year, and went straight from the airport to the studio after a massive night in Amsterdam. I almost missed the flight, and I was so scattered the entire session, but this song worked because we captured exactly what had happened the night before. I’d had a solo night in Amsterdam, got really high and walked around the city. I’d been alone for a few days at this point, and wasn’t really looking after myself because I was going through a bit of a low time.”
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-unrecognizable 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. Out of this comes total tommy’s debut album, a collection of scuzzy bedroom-rock anthems appropriately titled bruises. Working alongside producer and long-time collaborator Mark Zito of Fractures – together, they kept their eyes on the dizzying and purifying energy of the live show, the environment for which total tommy was created. The album, written during a period in which she went through a breakup, moved cities, came out as queer and met her now-wife, it sees Holt’s bold, raw and witty voice on full display for the first time.
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.
Thoughts Words Action 