Amid Gen Z’s shoegaze revival, Total Tommy is the local scene’s shining light

It’s a little after 9pm at Brisbane’s Prince Consort Hotel, and Total Tommy and her band are quickly shuffling on stage, plugging in mics and testing amps for their coming set. The first night of music conference and showcase BigSound is busy and excitable, and there are a few notable industry figures nursing drinks at the back of the beer garden, keenly waiting for Total Tommy to start.

Total Tommy – real name Jess Holt – is no stranger to the stage, having spent several years releasing indie dance-pop under the name Essie Holt. But Total Tommy is a different beast entirely, a gritty alt-rock project born from a period of turmoil and euphoric rebirth. A handful of singles has been drip-fed throughout the year, each one arriving with more buzz than the last, so it’s understandable that the crowd at the Prince Consort continues to swell as the clock ticks down.

Total Tommy, aka Sydney-based shoegaze musician Jess Holt.Credit: Andrea Veltom

The set is gripping. Steely shoegaze singles like Microdose and Losing Out are particular highlights, Holt’s low vocals puncturing the barrage of distortion. Other songs, like the expansive Real, are more poignant, Holt pleading, “Don’t wake me up, it’s so real”, over a rush of synths. BigSound showcase sets are over in the blink of an eye, and only a couple of songs later Holt is stepping off the stage, visibly happy and relieved.

A few weeks later Holt is slowly sipping a beer in the back of another beer garden, this time in Redfern in Sydney. “It was one of the biggest stages I’ve played on so far,” she says of the BigSound gigs. “It was good actually having room to move … I’m always on these little stages where I fling an arm at my guitarist in the first song.”

Holt grew up in Melbourne, becoming enamoured at an early age with songwriters like Megan Washington and Missy Higgins. Later, after picking up the guitar at 14, she was drawn to the magnetic energy of ’90s rock icons like Hole and Bikini Kill. Canadian duo Tegan and Sara were another key touchstone, and Holt shows me the small “19” tattoo she had inked in their honour.

She played flute for a while as a teenager (“hated it,” she says, laughing) but would spend hours and hours driving around Melbourne singing in her car because she was too shy to sing at home. Eventually she worked up the courage to take some songs she’d written to friend and producer Joel Quartermain, who helped her fashion them into the shimmering pop of Essie Holt.

Holt saw reasonable success as Essie, putting together a string of solid releases, including the 2020 EP Silent Wars. She kept writing for the project, intending to push it forward, but the songs and direction started to slip and change as Holt went through significant upheaval in her personal life. Before long, Holt was looking down at songs that reflected a completely different person.

Holt is open about these tumultuous changes: a painful break-up with a long-term partner in Melbourne, uprooting her life and moving to Sydney, coming out as queer after a long time questioning, meeting and falling in love with her now-wife. There were periods of bad behaviour, Holt admits. She’s happier and more settled now than she’s ever been, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge.

“It was a massive Saturn return,” Holt says. “I kept writing and writing and it completely changed, I had changed. I just didn’t feel like me any more. I look at those pictures and I’m like, ‘who is she?’ I don’t even remember that girl.”

After a discussion with her management, Essie Holt was finished. The change cracked open Jess Holt’s creative freedom, and more songs started to take shape and form into Total Tommy’s debut album, Bruises. She teamed up with longtime collaborator and producer Mark Zito (who performs under the name Fractures), sending tracks back and forth between Melbourne and Sydney. One song – the absorbing, liquidy Microdose – altered the direction of the album.

“It was the guitar tones specifically,” Holt says. “It just made me feel so much and I just thought, ‘I want everything to sound like that’. I don’t even really remember writing it now because it happened so quickly, it was just a blur.”

Guitar is a significant presence across Bruises, from the moment opener Adeline begins with a surging, rippling riff. The palette draws on Holt’s heroes Hole, of course, but it also takes a fair chunk from other ’90s luminaries like Mazzy Star and seminal shoegaze album Loveless from My Bloody Valentine.

Total Tommy is not alone in diving back into this period, which, alongside post-punk, has had a major resurgence both here and abroad recently thanks to bands like Yves Tumor, Floodlights, Dvrkworld and Radio Free Alice. Elsewhere along the spectrum, recent albums like Lustre, the debut from Sydney favourites the Buoys, and Body Type’s Expired Candy brilliantly play in late ’90s/early ’00s frenetic garage pop-rock. There are moments of this on Bruises, like the Garbage-influenced, sex-obsessed Plus One.

Bruises is aptly named: an arresting collection of tracks that sketch out the past few difficult years Holt went through. “The name Bruises actually came from a conversation I had with a friend,” she reflects, pausing for a moment to sip her beer. “It’s about the bruises you accumulate and the ones you leave on other people. And I think I’ve left a lot on other people.”

Bruises is Holt’s debut album as Total Tommy: “It’s about the bruises you accumulate and the ones you leave on other people,” she says.

Releasing the songs into the public sphere is nerve-racking, she admits, partly because some of the songs address people and events that are still very private and painful. Despite that, Holt feels more confident than ever as Total Tommy – and the irony of finding that liberation after relinquishing her real name on stage isn’t lost on her.

There are plenty of tracks that dwell in the darkness, but others – the joyous Girlfriend, the first song Holt wrote when she came out, and the aforementioned Plus One – brim with the happiness of falling in love and embracing a new identity. “I always just wanted to put female pronouns in my songs,” she says, laughing. “Now I think it’s at the point where I’m like, ‘OK, just chill it out. We get it, baby gay.’ But I was like, everyone needs to know!”

Holt’s sharp skill as a songwriter is evident – the tracks across Bruises are tight and well-constructed, and while they stretch and flex with washed-out guitars and synths, they never stray or lose their direction. Some of the tracks, in particular Adeline, were carved with the help of Holt’s wife, Sydney musician Caitlin Park – otherwise known as Handsome. It wasn’t always a musical partnership that worked. “When we first started writing we couldn’t get anything done, we were so pigheaded. Our egos were too high.” Holt smiles. “Now, it’s great. She keeps me honest. She knows things I’m thinking before I’ve even clocked it with myself.”

Festival slots and more gigs are on the horizon, with Holt having recently wrapped up some sets at SXSW Sydney. It’s a tiring schedule as Holt is still working full-time, but she’s desperate to be on stage with these songs, to hurl them into an audience instead of having them rattling around in her head. She knows the audience has bruises of their own to work through.

Total Tommy’s Bruises is out on November 29. Her coming tour dates include December 5 at Newcastle’s Hamilton Station Hotel, December 7 at Melbourne’s The Tote, and December 14 at Sydney’s Oxford Art Factory Gallery.

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