Long Play: Tommy Lefroy

i mean we've been ready yeah i think there's just so many pieces that have to fall into place for the release schedule to get worked out and begin and um Yeah, but we've been very eager to be back and so it's been really exciting.

It's been really busy.

But it's been wonderful to see that people still care about Tom and the Freud and that people are also down to start having these conversations that we want to be having around the record and the deeper themes and what's happening in the world today.

Yeah, it's been really good to be back.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's really good to have you back.

You can see from the response, people are loving what you're giving us.

And I love that you introduced the song as the song of the summer, but with undertones.

And I was like, what could that possibly be? And now we know.

Yeah, I suppose you've spoken about this already to some extent, but I just want to understand a bit more about the metaphor of the slush puppy.

So sort of why was it important that you use this to start the journey of this album with this specific metaphor?

Yeah, I, I liked, so, I mean, the song itself, I, I had liked the word, I wrote it down, obviously in the UK, slushy, I like the slurpees, the slush puppy.

And, um, I just liked the word a lot.

And, and obviously there's kind of the loaded metaphor of the Kool-Aid and the very saturated, very chemical looking beverage that we love to like guzzle down in the summer.

And I think the idea kind of started about amusement parks and like Disneyland and this feeling of being in this place that's selling happiness and selling an experience, but the undertone is so sinister and you can't help but feel like you're something's not quite right.

And I think to me, that felt like a metaphor just for everything, like what it means to be a part of society right now.

And yeah, I think it just felt like a sort of, yeah, sardonic sort of silly way to try and draw attention to this thing and talk about this thing that we were feeling all the time.

We were also reading a lot of Vonnegut at the time.

And I think the way that he approaches these kind of topics, you know, there's a parody to it.

There's like, it's like a little exaggerated.

Things are a little bit kind of like extreme.

And I think we kind of were leaning into that as well with the lyrical style and just like the descriptors and the way that we were talking about this theme.

I wanted to sort of do a little bit of a deep dive on all your references that you tend to infuse in your songs.

And yeah, you very aptly shared that clip of President George W. Bush rallying the crowds to give them hope, trying to equate resilience with spending.

That was quite fitting for sure.