FROM AMSTERDAM TO SOUTH MIMMS: THE CANNONBALL TRAJECTORY OF PIP BLOM
“Do you want to join this mad circus?” PIP BLOM
IN THE second series of her Mixtape Delivery Service radio show, Annie Clark – AKA St. Vincent – put Pussycat, an early blast of indie-rock brio by Amsterdam’s Pip Blom, on a playlist designed to reroute listener “Brook from Milwaukee”’s dull career trajectory in pharmaceuticals toward realising a dream of becoming a writer.
Not yet 25 and already with two LPs to her name, Pip Blom herself needed no such spur. Her parents work for a Dutch music website and enthusiastically aid Pip and younger brother Tender’s musical ambition. Through them, Blom discovered Parquet Courts, Breeders, Micachu & The Shapes; a generationspanning strain of alternative rock picked up in the nervy thrum of her own guitar pop.
If there’s a drawback to having cool parents it’s an inevitable divergence from your peers, as Blom discovered when searching for likeminded bandmates. “I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to join,” she laughs, speaking from the music room at the family’s home in Amsterdam. “And my brother didn’t want to be in the band either.”
With the songs for debut album Boat already written and a recording session booked, Tender was eventually persuaded to play guitar. Drummer Gini Cameron was found hiding in plain sight (she’d been to their primary school), and bassist Darek Mercks was recommended by friends. “It was a bit weird,” Blom acknowledges. “Asking someone to join when you’ve already got 100 shows lined up. Like, ‘Hey, do you want to join in this mad circus?’”
By the end of 2019, Britain had become the inner ring of the circus: “I was in the UK almost every month/week.” At this road-weary point, the title for the new album appeared by the side of the M1. “I was fed up,” Blom admits. “And then I saw the ‘Welcome Break’ sign. I was like, Whoa! This is such a cool name.”
With the album’s title settled, she returned to Amsterdam to write the songs, while watching documentaries on TV. “As soon as I play something that grabs my attention more than the documentary, I immediately record that,” she says of her process. “I build songs very mathematically.” Lyrics, she admits, are harder. “There is a distance because it’s not my native language. It’s funny, when my boyfriend heard [Welcome
Break] he said it sounded like a breakup record, which isn’t the case.”
Welcome Break was recorded while the band were under 14-day quarantine in Ramsgate, with producer Dave
McCracken. This album is
“a band project”, says
Blom, “a real proper unit”.
The songs are stronger and brighter, emerging with new confidence from
Boat ’s layers of distortion.
She is especially proud of the die-cut vinyl artwork and contrasting inner sleeve, designed by her boyfriend, and inspired by her dad’s tales of
Factory releases.
If there was a new song Blom would offer to boost the resolve of Brook from Milwaukee, it would be Keep It Together. “Because it comes together from an airy, bubbly intro, then the chorus is more rock. More fun. Yeah,” she considers, “I think that would be my thing.”
Pip Blom’s Welcome Break is released by Heavenly on October 8.