Tiny Tomboy Takes a Big Step on Sophomore Album

Tiny Tomboy isn’t afraid to do it live.

The Denver indie group used to play throw-and-go house shows while founding members Eliza Neiman-Golden and Sam Seymour attended Colorado College. Back then, sets mostly consisted of covers with a couple originals sprinkled in. But it didn’t matter. The point was the group enjoyed performing.

“I was a freshman and she was a sophomore,” says drummer Seymour, 25, adding that they initially met after enrolling in the same songwriting class. “We were playing together because it was fun, and I think that energy is still there today, and that’s why we’re still doing it.”

“Yeah, we just started playing frat parties,” Neiman-Golden, 26, adds.

“We’d play house shows for two-and-a-half, three hours and it would be, like, twenty covers,” Seymour recalls.

“Maybe an hour-and-a-half,” as Neiman-Golden recalls. “But it was ridiculous. We had maybe two originals [‘Midnight Launderette,’ released in 2020, was one of them]. We just started playing frat parties.”

A brief break during the pandemic allowed Neiman-Golden to write more Tiny Tomboy songs, which eventually landed on the band's 2022 debut, Sunburn. The trio, which includes bassist Ethan Gould, who also went to Colorado College and joined the band in 2021, continued to play the college and DIY circuits before landing a proper venue gig.

“It went terribly,” Neiman-Golden says with a laugh. “But from there, we started making the transition. After we played a couple, people were just hitting us up more and more. But it was really just a college band for a while.”
Today, Tiny Tomboy is more active than ever, and it's one of the most popular indie acts because of it. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the process of workshopping new material from the stage first and foremost. If you’ve seen a Tiny Tomboy show since 2022, you’ve probably already heard some of the songs from its sophomore album, Psychic Scar, which is set to be released on Saturday, February 1, via local independent label Mean World Records. To celebrate, the band will share the album in full with a release party at Marquis Theater. Local acts Dry Ice and Barbara are also on the bill.

“That’s definitely been our method so far is that we’ll write a song, and we’ll play it a bunch of times and it’ll change, then we’ll discover, ‘Okay, this is the version we want to record,’” Neiman-Golden explains, adding that only one song, an acoustic tune, hasn’t previously been played live before. But in case you haven’t caught Tiny Tomboy locally, in the meantime, you can still check out Psychic Scar singles “Dead Dog,” “Disposable Vape,” “Sandy” and “Vegas.”

That batch is a good sampler of Tiny Tomboy’s reflective dream-pop shoegaze, complete with Neiman-Golden’s unfeigned lyrics, which are typically torn from a page out of her personal diary. “I feel inspired all the times I feel like I’m going through it," she says. "It will be kind of hard to say or even play that stuff for the first couple times, then it helps me process it."

“I like the idea of it being journal entries. That’s how I write stuff: start out in my journal, free writing or take stuff I’ve written in the past,” Neiman-Golden continues.

Psychic Scar reflects a more coming-of-age period of her life, as well as the maturation of Tiny Tomboy with Seymour and Gould. “The time that I was writing, it was very formative years. That wasn’t necessarily the intention of when I wrote these songs, but the first song on the album is [about] being frustrated with not being able to connect with someone or feeling like I can’t find love ever. The last two are about being in love, in a way,” Neiman-Golden says. “I feel like the person I was, and probably that we all were, when we first started writing this album have changed so much from where we finished it.”

Seymour and Gould, whose voices are also all over Psychic Scar in the form of harmonies, respect Neiman-Golden’s words and don’t see a need to tweak her lyrics. “I think it’s important, at least lyrically, the message is clear and it’s Eliza’s voice,” Gould, 22, says.

After the album is out, the plan is to hit the road for a Southwest tour that will also include stops in California at the end of March into the beginning of April. But Tiny Tomboy still likes the intimacy of a house show here or there, especially now that Seymour, Gould and Neiman-Golden are roommates and can host concerts at their headquarters, which they’ve dubbed Tomboy Manor.

“We use it as more of a platform for other people,” according to Seymour.

“We’re doing what we can,” Gould says.

Tiny Tomboy, with Dry Ice and Barbara, 7 p.m. Saturday, February 1, Marquis Theater, 2009 Larimer Street. Tickets are $19.