TOMMY LEFROY SHARE NEW SINGLE ‘VACUUM’ OFF DEBUT ALBUM ‘THE PRECARIAT’

PHOTO: BRENDON BURTON

Indie rock duo Tommy Lefroy has shared new single "Vacuum", the final preview of their forthcoming debut album, The Precariat, out Friday 23 October via Thirty Tigers/Civilians. "Vacuum" reflects on band members Tessa Mouzourakis and Wynter Bethel’s experience of launching the project in London – where they knew virtually no one outside of each other – and the pressure chamber that created. It’s about a relationship you stake your future on, like building "an empire in a vacuum".

"Vacuum is a rare song about us," says Tommy Lefroy. "While we typically pull from our individual experiences, or external references, Vacuum is very simply about moments we’ve had together on our journey. It’s about the whirlwind experience of starting the band in London, where we both felt completely isolated and out of our depth at times, giving everything we had to a pipe dream project with no promise that any of it was going to work. There was a blind faith we had in each other early on."

Within the larger world of The Precariat, "Vacuum" offers a deeply personal testament to the connection and community at the heart of the record. Taking its title from the economic term for a growing class of people living with increasing instability and uncertainty, The Precariat examines what it means to come of age in an increasingly unpredictable world, ultimately finding togetherness as an antidote to isolation.

Written over six years between Nashville, Los Angeles, Vancouver, Michigan and London, the album draws from literature, art and history to connect larger cultural forces with the anxieties and contradictions of life today. Previous singles include "Angel in the House", inspired by Virginia Woolf’s landmark 1931 speech Professions for Women and the modern resurgence of trad-wife culture; the melancholic slow-burn "Thief"; and sharp-edged, satirical summer anthem "Slush Puppy".

The album’s literary underpinnings were recently explored in a wide-ranging SPIN feature, which dubbed Tommy Lefroy “music’s biggest book nerds” and highlighted the duo’s practice of hosting book swaps at their concerts, as well as the suggested reading list accompanying The Precariat. From Virginia Woolf and suffragette Mary Richardson to Guy Standing’s The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, these influences become jumping-off points for songs connecting history with the anxieties and contradictions of life today.

Co-produced by the band alongside Stephen Sesso, with executive production from Mike Crossey (The 1975, Arctic Monkeys, MUNA), the album offers an unflinching capture of the uncertainty and anxiety permeating our collective psyche, along with the universality of precarity, despite its tendency to isolate.

Since releasing their debut EP Flight Risk in 2021, Tommy Lefroy earned a JUNO Award nomination for Breakthrough Artist of the Year, opened for Sigrid at Wembley Arena less than a year after playing their first headline show in London, and toured internationally with Samia and Niall Horan, performing for audiences numbering in the tens of thousands. 

Their debut album The Precariat will be out Friday 23 October via Thirty Tigers/Civilians. "Vacuum" is out now and streaming everywhere.