FEATURE:
Spotlight
Pip Blom
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ALTHOUGH one cannot call…
Pip Blom a new act, the fact that a new album, Welcome Break, is out next month means I wanted to spotlight them. Led by Pip Blom, the Dutch Indie quartet with the same name are amazing. They released their acclaimed and exceptional debut album, Boat, in 2019. They are getting ready for follow-up. It will be released on Heavenly Recordings on 8th October. Here is a bit of biography about the amazing Dutch force:
“Pip Blom (born 1996) is a musician, singer and songwriter based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Pip Blom is also the name of her four-piece indie rock band.
"Never listen to people who want to change your music." With that advice from a fellow musician Amsterdam based Pip Blom (19, at the time) started writing songs. First with a three string Loog guitar, with the 14-track demo album Short Stories (2013) as a result.
Three years and an array of singles later, her sound had shifted into Courtney Barnett and The Breeders territory. The 'little girl with a guitar' had formed a fully-fledged indie rock band line-up. But it is still Pip.
Pip Blom's début full-length, Boat, was released in 2019 on Heavenly. The band performed at many festivals in The Netherlands, United Kingdom and beyond, from Lowlands to 'Glasto', and is now selling out venues as a headline act in the U.K.”.
I want to bring things up to date and look ahead to the release of Welcome Break. Most of the interviews online are from 2019. That is when Pip Blom sort of captured the most attention and were promoting their debut album. I will refer to Pip Blom as a band because, although the eponymous Blom leads the band, it is very much the music of a group. It must have been exciting for the band in 2019. They had so much energy and this buzz surrounding them. Of course, the pandemic slowed down some momentum last year and this. They must be excited to get back on the road! In 2019, NME featured them. It is interesting hearing how music runs through the Blom family:
“Dutch artist Pip Blom has already fulfilled much of her musical destiny. Form a band to breathe life into her solo bedroom recordings? Check. Sign a record deal with an indie label? Done. Play Glastonbury? It’s on the cards. The 22-year-old musician who fronts the indie quartet of her namesake will open the John Peel stage at Worthy Farm this month. She may have always had Glastonbury in her sights but the stage slot is a significance one: her father was pals with the late, great Peel himself.
Pip, with her younger brother Tender who plays guitar in her band, uphold a legacy together. Their father, Erwin Blom, was in a post-punk band called Eton Crop who Peel adored – so much so that he invited the Dutch group to perform five BBC Radio 1 sessions between 1983 and 1988. Eton Crop disbanded in the mid ‘90s but Erwin laid down something of a musical foundation for his children.
Tender is quick to downplay his father’s career, however. “I mean, not to talk trash about him but they didn’t achieve that much,” he says, sipping a beer in a sunny east London beer garden. “Aside from the John Peel sessions – that’s their claim to fame.” The 20-year-old gives off an air of belief that his band will trump his father’s accomplishments sooner rather than later.
‘Boat’, the group’s debut album, out now via cult label Heavenly Recordings (Manic Street Preachers, Saint Etienne) brims with melodic, college rock-indebted anthems. It follows 2016’s ‘Are We There Yet’ and 2018’s ‘Paycheck’: two EPs rammed with impossibly catchy lo-fi ditties. Basically, Pip Blom write songs that make you fall in love with guitars again.
The band are understandably “very excited” about opening the John Peel stage but in some ways the dream was never too distant nor too big for Pip. “It’s funny because around the period I started producing songs, I began a blog called ‘The road to Glastonbury’,” she says. “I asked lots of Dutch industry people if I could have a chat with them and then I turned it into an article. I wanted to play the festival once in my life. Lots of people were laughing and saying like, ‘Well, it’s quite an ambitious goal’, which it is, but I think it’s really important to aim very high.”
I shall bring it forward to now. Pip Blom are looking ahead to a new album. It is going to be one of this year’s best om my view. Before providing some album details, Pip Blom’s lead spoke to Mixed Mantra earlier this year about her start in music and what the band set out to achieve on Boat:
“Pip Blom, a 24-year-old singer-songwriter based in Amsterdam who fronts the indie pop band that bears her name, has made quite a splash both at home and internationally since she began recording and releasing her tunes in 2016. The band’s debut album Boat, released in 2019, was met with widespread critical acclaim (Rolling Stone called it an “instant classic.”).
Mixed Mantra recently chatted with Pip Blom to learn more about her origins as a musician, Amsterdam’s music scene and her group’s second album.
MIXED MANTRA: How did you first get into making music?
PIP BLOM: I first got into music because of my parents. My mom worked as a music journalist, and my dad played in a band. They talked about music a lot, mostly about tours with my dad’s band — my mom was their sound engineer — and they always told the wildest stories. I had taken some guitar lessons and some singing lessons, but nothing too serious. The real turning point was when I was at a gig — I think I was 14 or something — and I saw Parquet Courts play, and it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen. I immediately thought, “I want this too!”
MM: What did you set out to achieve with your debut album Boat? How has all of the critical acclaim for the album impacted your group or made you feel?
PB: I don’t think we ever decided on a certain goal. However, it has always been my personal goal to play the U.K. festival Glastonbury once, so once that happened I felt like we made it. We got so many good reviews and responses from people and press. It was just really nice.
MM: We’re really interested in songwriting processes. Can you walk us through how you wrote “Hours”?
PB: Here’s how it usually works: I start watching a documentary and play some stuff on my guitar, focusing on the documentary. Whenever I play something that sparks my interest, I stop watching, record it and start building the song. “Hours” is based around this one guitar loop and drum loop. I had just borrowed a very weird synth from a guy who said he didn’t really understand it and I loved the way it sounded, so I decided to play around with it, and that’s how the bridge happened. I work in blocks, so I work on the verse, finish it, start working on the chorus and so on, until the song is done.
MM: What has been Pip Blom’s most memorable set so far?
PB: That’s a hard one. There are so many. Some because they were amazing — Glastonbury, Corona Capital in Mexico, our biggest sold-out show in London at the Scala — and others because they were terrible, ha.
MM: How has COVID-19 impacted your artistic process?
PB: It’s been a lot harder to find inspiration. However, we did manage to record and finish our second album, so we can’t really complain about it too much.
MM: What can you tell us about your new album? Release date?
PB: Yeah, it will hopefully appear somewhere this year. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we’ll also be able to play live shows again by that time, because we really, really miss that. But we will see!
MM: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
PB: Go check out Personal Trainer! They’re an awesome Dutch band with super catchy songs”.
Welcome Break is an album I am looking forward to. From what we have heard from the album so far, it is going to be incredible. Go and pre-order a copy. This is what Rough Trade wrote about the upcoming Welcome Break:
“Actively seeking out moments of creative-authenticity, be it via a slightly- out-of-tune guitar or proudly-fuzzed vocals, Pip Blom take us back full circle and introduce us to their Welcome Break- an eleven-track release which resonates with about as much decisive allure as it’s Boat precursor, but this time with a bit more contemporary chaos to boot. Where Boat reckoned as a fresh-faced, yet gloriously fearless game- changer, Welcome Break is the self-assured older sibling who, with an additional year or two behind themselves, isn’t afraid to speak out, take lead, and instigate a liberated revolution-come-bliss-out.
Following an extensive touring schedule which saw the Dutch 4-piece roam over field, oceans, and Glastonbury’s John Peel stage following the release of their debut record Boat, any such cool-cat would be forgiven for wanting to kick back, and indulge in some very appreciated, time off. As is often the way, such timely-abandon cannot be said for Pip Blom however, who immediately began to gather up all her soaked-up inspirations taken from the road, and manifest a re-energised sense of self, and ritualistic songwriting. It’s at this stage in our indie-fairy-tale that things start to get ever so 2020.
Whilst the world was suddenly put on hold as a result of Covid-19, Pip Blom, who’d made plans to return to their favourite ‘Big Jelly Studios’ in Ramsgate, England, were suddenly faced with a very sticky, kind of dilemma. “We’d scheduled to go into the studio in September but summer started moving and there were a couple of countries not allowed to go to the UK anymore... a week before we had to go, the Netherlands was one of those countries”- notes Pip.
In total, three weeks were spent recording what would become the groups sophomore release; a Al Harle engineered love-affair which was self- produced entirely by the band and culminated in a legally intimate, fully- seated album play-back, to six, of Ramsgate’s most chorus-savvy and ‘in- the-know’ residents. Getting out of their hometown and into an environment which removed all notions of “normality” or personal space, was an atmospheric godsend in terms of motivation; an act which encouraged Pip Blom to re-adjust and buckle down as a unit again, after spending so long in mandatory isolation”.
Perhaps a bit late to the game regarding Pip Blom, I think it is an important time to spotlight a band who are getting stronger and are making the best music of their career. I am looking forward to seeing where the band go and what comes next. Follow them on social media and go and get Welcome Break. I think that the next few years will be very exciting…
FOR the amazing Pip Blom.
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