Sydney-based artist total tommy will release her second album Trapezoid on October 23 via Play It Again Sam, alongside a new title-track single centred on imperfection, identity and the small details holding everything together.
The project marks a heavier shift for Melbourne-born singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Jess Holt. While debut album bruises moved through lighter and more tender spaces, Trapezoid leans further into distorted guitars, grunge, emo, post-punk, pop-punk and post-rock.
Electronic textures also enter the frame on tracks including Bloodshot, giving the record a wider and more restless palette without pulling it away from its guitar-led core.
The title track became the key to understanding the album’s wider direction. Holt explains:
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.
That idea runs through an album filled with movement, nostalgia and cultural references, including Winona Forever, which nods towards Winona Ryder and Reality Bites while capturing the feeling of being emotionally and physically in transit.
The album’s growth is clearest in its closing moments. Where bruises ended with the subdued Shark Attacks, Trapezoid closes with Tailgate, allowing the record to expand into noise rather than retreat from it. Holt says:
It is just the ending I want people to hear. 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.
Across its eleven tracks, Trapezoid sounds less concerned with neat edges or emotional symmetry. It lets distortion, nostalgia and self-acceptance sit slightly crooked. Which is pretty much where the interesting stuff usually happens.
Trapezoid Tracklist
- Girl, Interrupted
- Pretty Little Mouth
- Trapezoid
- Gutterball
- Winona Forever
- City Of Mannequins
- Bloodshot
- Nosedive
- Tearjerker
- Out Of Frame
- Tailgate