Hello Blossoms
As rockers debut at No.1, everyone’s saying
Blossoms grew out of the same type of grim streets in Greater Manchester as Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Smiths and a host of others. Like their illustrious predecessors, they’re working-class lads who formed the band for ‘summat to do’.
The group came together in 2013, in Stockport to be exact. A UK No.1 album and a support slot to The Stone Roses at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium did not seem likely when they were younger, though. Their singer, Tom Ogden, says: ‘That sort of thing doesn’t happen to people where we’re from… D’you know what I mean?’
But happen it has. Their selftitled debut album, released earlier this month, brims with cultured electronic pop songs which are very much in the musical zeitgeist, but nod to the greats of their local scene.
One of these greats, James Skelly of The Coral, comes from Birkenhead, an hour or so down the M56 – and when he heard a demo of Blossoms’s song Blow, he was impressed, to say the least.
‘When he heard it, he said songs like that could make you as big as Oasis,’ says 22-year-old Tom.
‘He said there was a euphoric feeling and an attitude to our songs that he liked. When we got signed (to Virgin EMI) we knew we wanted James to produce the record.’
That record went on to top the UK charts, and last Sunday it retained its No.1 spot. But here’s a fact for statistical nerds and music industry doomsayers: in its second week, it had the lowest sales figures of a UK No.1 album ever, shifting just 8,000 copies.
But nonetheless, it’s an impres- sive achievement to hit the top spot with your debut record, and Tom was understandably delighted when we spoke a couple of days after the group had first achieved this feat.
‘It’s surreal. It’s mad, like. We’re blown away,’ Tom says, sounding remarkably like Manchester United legend Gary Neville.
‘We didn’t really think about how high it might go in the charts. Then people around us started saying that it was doing really well in the midweek charts. We just thought, “Bloody hell, we have a real shot here at being number one here”.’
Though he seems at any stage to be about to utter the immortal words ‘mad fer it’, Tom actually met the first Blossoms recruit in circumstances at which the Gallagher brothers would surely have flicked a V-sign.
‘Yeah, me and Joe Donovan, our drummer, won a trip to Alton Towers for having perfect attendance in Year 8 at primary school,’ he reveals.
He then gets a little embarrassed by the possible damage this could do to his credibility.
‘That was the only year that we went in every day,’ he sniffs. ‘By Year 10 and 11 we missed a few days and were late now and then.’
Further proof of his reckless side comes with the revelation that he ‘used to get out of science class by saying I had a keyboard lesson’.
‘I wasn’t taking it seriously then,’ he adds. ‘I just learned how to play the James Bond theme. I taught myself the guitar and when I began to get good. I focused on that instead of the keyboards.’
And it seems his father was instrumental in getting Tom to channel his energies into songwriting.
‘He just has great musical tastes,’ Tom says. ‘He likes all types of music – current stuff, old stuff – he knows what makes a good pop record I think. He always encouraged me to write songs and he saw something in them straight away. My dad said, “You could go places with songs like that” – and now we have.’
Who knows if the Stockport group will emulate the success of Oasis, but their likeable singer genuinely knows how lucky they are – for a very poignant reason.
They were friends of the band Viola Beach, from neighbouring Warrington, who died tragically when their car plunged into a river in Sweden while on tour there in February.
Viola Beach were also a band on the rise before the tragedy, and their posthumously released self-titled debut album hit No.1 in Britain in the week before Blossoms took top spot.
‘It’s heartbreaking. We had been on tour with them before it happened,’ Tom says.
‘We were in Guildford and they were supposed to come down the next day from Sweden to support us. We got a live recording of their set when they had supported us previously, and we play it as if it’s them supporting us in the venues before we go on every night that they were meant to support us... the trajectory we were both on brings it so close to home.’
‘When James Skelly heard it, he said songs like that could make you as big as Oasis’
Blossoms will be playing at the Electric Picnic next month. Their self-titled album is out now on Virgin EMI.