You would be forgiven for mistaking Tommy Lefroy for a solo male artist. In fact, the name belongs to transatlantic singer-songwriters Tessa Mouzourakis and Wynter Bethel in a rare quarantine project turned success story. Named after Thomas Langlois Lefroy — the Irish politician and supposed inspiration behind Jane Austen’s Mr Darcy — the duo found connection through their love of literature and music, choosing the masculine moniker as a nod to the pen names of historic female writers.
On 23 October, the pair will release their debut album, The Precariat, the follow-up to their 2024 EP, born blue. The Precariat distils economic anxiety and a fervent bookishness into a gut-wrenching 12-track indie-rock narrative about a generation left behind. Following a two-year period away from the spotlight, Tommy Lefroy kicked off their new tour at Assai Records in Edinburgh on 7 October. Tucked away in the back room after the show, the pair kindly agreed to an interview.
Returning to the stage, it turns out, is a nerve-racking affair. “It felt daunting, and I was definitely nervous,” Mouzourakis admits. But the nerves are tempered by the prospect of meeting new people and sharing music that has spent so long in the confines of the studio. “It’s always validating to see fans and play music for people. It’s like closing the loop.” Bethel is just as relieved. “We’ve spent so long conceiving it and fostering it, and now we’re at the best part, which is sharing [the album].” After six years of nurturing the album, her unfettered joy is hard to miss.
The songs on The Precariat were written across different continents at different stages of the duo’s lives, evolving in tandem with their ever-changing circumstances. Unsurprisingly, the tracks that proved the most rewarding to finish sit at opposite ends of that lengthy process. For Mouzourakis, it was the album’s title track: a sprawling, shape-shifting epic and one of the last songs to come together. “It’s a very, very long song, with a whole second section,” she says. Finishing it felt like drawing a line under the album. “That big finale was the moment I thought, OK, the record is finally done.”
Bethel’s choice, ‘Threat,’ reaches back to before Tommy Lefroy ever existed, when the pair were simply two friends a long way from home. They always knew they were saving it for their first full-length album, which only made it all the more daunting to record. “It was so personal and vulnerable,” Bethel says. They co-produced the record with Stephen Sesso (The 1975, Yungblud) and Mike Crossey (Arctic Monkeys, MUNA). Bethel identifies Crossey’s mix of ‘Threat’ as a critical moment for her experience. “I just remember hearing it and crying” she says, “He’d tied the idea up so nicely.”
Home is a fragile motif in The Precariat, representing a struggle between the personal and the political. On ‘God Made Michigan’ and the title track, the idea of home is broken down and reconstructed — a feeling paralleled in the dilapidated house on the album’s cover art. Scattered between multiple places, Mouzourakis describes how familiarity becomes a form of preservation for her. She describes a “cycle of finding the familiar in things that remind you of other places: In London she sought out coffee shops that recalled Vancouver, and in Los Angeles she looks for ones that echo London. On tour, the pair return to the same places, creating small rituals amid the unfamiliarity. For Bethel, a real anchor is people. “My friends, partner and sisters are my grounding forces, calling them really helps.”
Books are never far away with Tommy Lefroy, who weave literature into their writing process at virtually every stage. Guy Standing’s book of the same name is the obvious starting point of an album concerned with economic precarity, but Mouzourakis also points to Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine and The Coming Insurrection by the French philosophical collective The Invisible Committee. The latter inspired the duo’s single ‘Slush Puppy’ — a satirical swipe at hyper-consumerism and nihilism. Bethel found her vision in Lauren Elkin’s Art Monsters, which explores the work of feminist artists and the ways they challenge the boundaries of art. It was “hugely influential,” she says, and gave the album track titles including ‘Angels in the House’ and ‘Rokeby Venus.’
When asked to sum up the album in three words — other than “precarious”, of course — they both chuckle. “I’ve recently been throwing out a word, ‘solastalgia,’ coined by an Australian philosopher,” says Bethel. “It’s homesickness for a place you haven’t left. Our world is changing so rapidly, and we’re all grieving the loss of what was.”
“Surrender,” adds Mouzourakis. “And we were saying…”
“Fuzz!” Bethel laughs.
“Yes, fuzz!”
Solastalgia, surrender and fuzz: catch it all on 23 October. The Precariat will crush you, spit you out and leave you wanting more.
Photo by Brendon Burton, provided to The Student for press use
