Tommy Lefroy

To listen to Tommy Lefroy’s biggest song you would need exactly 58 seconds. And around second 40 you will probably start feeling your soul slowly leaving your body. At least that’s what happened to me when, in an amber April afternoon of last year, I accidently stumbled upon Flight Risk. 

Tommy Lefroy is the stage name of the indie rock duo consisting of Tessa and Wynter, long time best friends that, in a time of difficult heartbreaks, decided to start this project and choose to name themselves as the alleged heartbreaker of the well-known writer Jane Austin, Tommy Lefroy, to finally be in control for once. 

They wrote, recorded and produced their debut record Flight Risk EP on FaceTime, from two different countries, and then released it in 2021, slowly starting to gain more attention and reaching a broader audience. 

I wanted to be something, but I’m already gone

The last line of Flight Risk, shouted from both speakers as it tries to break out of the song, is the attempt to convey this everlasting feeling of longing for something more and it highlights one of the central themes of Tommy Lefroy’s writings: existentialism. Simplistically, existentialism is the philosophical movement that focuses its effort toward finding the meaning of one’s existence and it was often used by Tommy Lefroy to describe the purpose of their music. If we listen to the last song of the EP, Trashfire, we can easily understand what they mean, as they describe to us the difficulties of growing up and figuring out what to do with your life when transitioning from kids to adults and when “all of the sudden you’re a hostage to things you thought you wanted” or when you can’t find answers to all your questions and you start feeling like an “existentialist, you want to know what all of this is”. 

Moving to one of my personal favorite songs, we get to Vampires, where the same 4 chords progression move down three frets on the same bright electric guitar as Trashfire shapes the melody of the track. We here shift our focus from ourselves to those around us. When I discovered this song it immediately resonated with me since I had recently met someone who perfectly fitted the description that Tommy Lefroy paints for us: someone who feels everything deeply, who is fighting against vampires, that represent the common sense and what is considered obvious when actually it’s not even real, someone that if you could you would just try to spare and protect from the impact of the harshness and unfairness of life. 

I got a feeling I don’t know what it is yet
maybe somebody’s God gave you some kind of mission
You can fall in love a thousand times, I just want for you to love your life
But if ever you’re out there and can’t beat the vampires, just know that I’ve got you, just know it gets better

Are some of the sentences that I wish I could have told them and that Lefroy just kindly expressed much better on my behalf.

Another theme very dear to the band presented in Flight Risk EP and then further developed in their following projects is female solidarity, empowerment and understanding or, to use Lefroy’s words, Girlhood (Godhood). There are so many profound and interesting tracks in Rivals and Born Blue, their second and third EP, regarding this topic, such as The mess, Girlhood, Godhood, Garden or Let me with heartbreaking lines that I still can’t stop think about to this days like I wanna be free, I wanna be ugly, I wanna be mean, don’t wanna be seen, wanna be believed in, believed or well the older I get, the more I get sad when I keep myself from eating and so do all my friends, I thought being a woman was cleaning up the mess, but I am, but I am the mess. And if it wasn’t enough communicating through their songs, one aspect that gives such intimacy and vulnerability to their music is that Tessa and Wynter are making it all by themselves. There are no other writers, musicians (except for drums in a few songs) or producers, they are not signed with any label and they go on tour with no band or backing vocalists or large entourage. Just two girls making music exactly how they want it and sharing it with their fans in the most direct way possible. This picture below was taken by me at their concert in Berlin and I believe it can magically capture something of what they are beautifully trying to express.