He's sort of processing it all as he talks about it, although stepping into this new release cycle and getting asked about it is probably the first time he's been able to think about it properly. This is where he starts to explain that time is going too fast, and he was promised there wouldn't be a lot of touring this year.

It's been over a year since he released 'Victoria', an EP that was more consciously indie-leaning and lyrically felt uber-personal, spanning topics from secret love stories through to the death of a friend. At the time, it was a change of pace from the giddiness of his earliest releases, but now he's getting back to himself.

"I think because the last one was so personal, I cared so much about the way I put it out and presented myself and all the content around it, I feel like I lost a part of me. If you looked at me during that time, it was very, like, 'I'm so serious', which is just not me at all. With this one, I'm proud of them being my songs more so because I'm like, it just sounds good. I'm not sitting here like, it's a deep story about when I met my cousin Timmy in the mountains; I made this song with people I like, and it sounds good."

The six songs that make up the EP weren't initially intended as such. In the spirit of making music more playfully, rather than it being written on the guitar in his room, he wrote this EP spontaneously with friend and previous collaborator Taka Perry.

Although born in London, Thomas grew up in Melbourne before moving back to the UK capital in 2019 to pursue music. He still calls Melbourne home, though, and when he visits (two weeks is more than enough, he says), he crams some time into work. On this occasion, he travelled home for Christmas and flew up to Sydney to spend a week in the studio with Taka.

He'd finally released 'Georgia' – a track that'd been played live time and time again throughout his rigorous 2022 touring schedule and demanded by fans – in November and didn't have any plans for it beyond the single release, but it found it's way onto an EP by the start of 2023.

He decided to pull it into a full project shortly before the release of 'I Loved A Boy', which is easily the 'deepest' track here, and his Taylor-Swift-ified sung-from-someone-else's-perspective moment.

Also on the EP are the big summer bop 'W4NNA DO' (which opens with the second milk reference on the EP), 'Not Saying Goodbye' which sounds like Busted at their most ballad-y, and 'Wet Tongue', a song that bottles teenage sexual frustration and features the phrase "full throttle right hand" (he does not know what this means).

It's Thomas embracing his pop side – even if he says he'd rather be called a rock star (boooooo). "That's why I'm so excited for this EP because I fucking love pop music. And we can get into the whole Justin Bieber thing where he's like, 'it's popular music'," he says that part in a bad Canadian accent, "but who cares whether it's Justin Bieber saying that or whether it's fucking John Lennon? I'm not afraid of pop music at all. My favourite one's 'W4NNA DO', and that one is so pop."

The big star of the show is latest drop, '2009 Toyota'. It's a song that condenses the fun he's been craving into 2 and a half minutes, featuring a pitched-up chorus and nonsense lyrics that flew straight off the top of the dome.

A known fibber, Thomas' lies have caught up with him on occasion. "It did come back and bite me. I did a TV thing recently, where they were like, 'we've heard you carry a toothpick with you all the time', I was like, I've never done that in my life."

It hasn't deterred him, though. He doesn't even own a 2009 Toyota Camry (the lyric confused his mum quite a bit), but he does have a Holden Cruze (this is a Chevrolet Cruze in the UK) back in Australia. However, Thomas does plan on getting his hands on a Toyota for his upcoming June tour – he's playing six dates in far more intimate venues than the Kentish Town Forum he headed up at the end of 2022 – where he'll be driving himself around the country.

It's part of a sort-of bit where Thomas says the label spent too much on touring last year, so he's having to do the promotion himself. It's not limited to driving himself around on tour either; his Instagram shows him putting up promotional posters himself too.

"We went through all the costs of touring last year, and we were just like, fuck no, we're never doing that again," he explains. Ironically it seems the touring funds have gone into getting the actual vehicle instead. "I think the label's buying [the car], which is really funny. I hope I get to keep it afterwards because then, technically, my record label's bought me a car." Now that's a rock star move.

He tells us they've booked him in for a legal driving test, too, to ensure he is road safe before flinging himself down the M40. This seems to have touched a nerve.

"I can drive! People comment on my shit all the time as well, saying, 'I feel like you can't drive'. Do I just give off 'I can't drive' energy?" Now we're not here to make assumptions, but Thomas has arrived to our photo shoot with a black eye after dropping a weight on his face the previous day and admits in our chat he's accidentally leaked his own address on a live stream before. Getting behind the wheel for his own tour sounds a bit concerning. "I'm a very capable driver. I've never been in an accident; I've only had one speeding ticket. I've done all the driving, guys."

We, particularly, are hoping he makes it around the UK in one piece because he'll be pulling up at Signature Brew in August for his headline set at Dork's Day Out. It comes towards the end of a more relaxed festival season for Thomas this year and before he heads off to Europe for another intimate run.

He adds that owning a pub is actually one of his long-term goals. "I go by Thomas in a lot of places, but I'm lucky that I can shorten my name to Tom. Like, Tom's Beer is such a good name; he just sounds like he runs a brewery. Tom's Pub. That's so great, right?"

Despite all of the fun he's currently having, Thomas drops in that he's getting into album mode, and we'll see that serious side pop out again then. Whatever's coming next, it's sure to be as unpredictable as he is (today, we break the record for most tangents in a one-hour interview, so we can only imagine how his writing sessions go). He's taking every day as it comes – sometimes he wakes up and finds out Elton John wants him to play a show, other times he realises he's doing a shoot, and he's got a shiner – embracing the rollercoaster that's been the last few years for him.

The EP might be six songs Thomas Headon likes and thinks you'd like too, but it's also a glimpse into the joyful chaos of his world. No matter where he's going, with Thomas behind the wheel, it's gonna be a wild ride. ■