bruises (Vinyl)

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. Out of this comes total tommy’s debut album, a collection of scuzzy bedroom-rock anthems appropriately titled bruises. 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.