It’s an age-old question: How do you find new inspiration when you’re a chart-topping band five albums into your career and entering your second decade? The answer is found in a giant fibreglass gorilla. Of course, it is. Yes, for Blossoms, the high-stakes search for Gary the Gorilla, who was stolen from his home in Scotland, provided the spark that inspired their vibrant dancefloor-slaying fifth album ‘Gary’, which finds the Stockport quintet entering a new era with a renewed lightness and freedom, on their most fun and engaging album yet.
“When you first came to the room and said ‘I’ve written a song about a fibreglass gorilla that’s been stolen’, I was like, you’ve lost the plot,” laughs drummer Joe Donavan as he recounts singer and songwriter Tom Ogden revealing his latest flash of inspiration.
“Maybe it’s my sense of humour,” explains Tom as he remembers hearing the story of the great gorilla heist on his car radio. “It was sandwiched between proper news, and the fact it was being spoken about like that tickled me. The fact that he had a name, ‘Gary’. If you give someone a name, it gives them more weight and personality. Gary the Gorilla. It’s alliteration. It just pricked my ears, and I thought it was funny. I was thinking, why have they stolen him? They stole him at night. It was like something out of a film. It’s ludicrous. I went home and started reading about it, and thought, why not? Why can’t it be a song? I like songs that can be about anything.”
‘Gary’ was the first song Tom wrote for the album, and it proved to be a defining moment in establishing a different way of working for the songwriter. He cites a previous beloved single ‘Your Girlfriend’ as a song in the lineage of ‘Gary’, an example of the kind of observational, frequently humour-led approach of this record as Blossoms lean into being very Blossoms in the best pop tradition.
“It’s got a bit of a sense of humour about it,” says Tom as he explains the reasons why the album simply had to be called ‘Gary’. “People will be able to understand it. It just felt right. Some people think it might be a stupid idea, but I think we can get away with it. It feels very us.”
"Some people think it might be a stupid idea, but I think we can get away with it. It feels very us"
Tom Ogden
The album title and the freewheeling nature of its creation are instructive of a different approach the band took while making this record. Their previous album, ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’ in 2022, was a resounding success, hitting Number 1 on the album chart, but it was a more considered, artful and slightly darker-hued record than their previous pop highs. “Our last album was us being a bit more serious, it had themes running through it, whereas this time it was like, let’s do the other side of us and not take ourselves too seriously,” reflects Joe.
In truth, despite their best efforts to be lush and classy, slapstick messiness wasn’t too far away. “Even on ‘Ribbon Around The Bomb’, we tried to take ourselves more seriously, and when we put the gig on, the curtain would get stuck and things like that, little tragic things,” he laughs. “We’re not that band. We’re not dead cool. We’re more of a jokey band, and that suits us more.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5UWge0rP-U
‘We’re not a jokey band!” interjects Tom as he offers a more nuanced take. “We’ve just got a sense of humour. We’ve got the podcast; we’re five mates. We take the music seriously, but we have a bit of fun with it.”
That aspect of having fun is the key thing. It’s the energy that drives ‘Gary’ as Blossoms lean into the nonsense and theatricality of being a pop band. They feel more at ease and more eager to be unashamedly them. Perhaps some of this freedom comes from their newfound independent status as they left their longtime record deal with major label Virgin EMI in 2023, with ‘Gary’ the first album released on their own label ODD SK Records. Did they really feel more relaxed without the pressures of a major label deal for the first time in their career? “I don’t think it’s got anything to do with the label personally,” answers Tom.
“In the beginning, it had an opposite effect,” continues Joe. “We thought we had to be more bang-on. I think it was good. We’ve got a really good relationship, but our contract was up, and we wanted to keep hold of our masters. Major labels don’t do that, so they were like, yeah, go ahead.”
If anything, the mutual separation forced the band to look more deeply at everything they do. “We’ve always had full creative control on all our records. We’ve never had to do anything we didn’t want to do. We just don’t have that blanket and force that you have with a major. They can knock a few more doors down. We felt you’ve got to stand out a bit more when you don’t have that backing. We’ve analysed every detail this time.”
Maybe if they were still with the label, ‘Gary’ would have been an entirely different project, but Tom and the band are now emboldened by the possibility of forging their own path. “Going to a major label and saying we’re calling it ‘Gary’, would they have been like, ‘What are you doing?’”
“I didn’t give a fuck this time,” laughs Tom. “This is what it’s called: you’re either on board or you’re not.”
"We're not that band. We're not dead cool"
Joe Donavan
Tom’s songwriting has always defined Blossoms; it’s the band’s foundation and has made them one of our most beloved groups for nearly a decade now. This time around saw the songwriting embracing a different way to tell stories with relatability and humour foregrounded instead of allusion and mystery.
“That style of songwriting I found on my own through our song ‘Your Girlfriend’, that was me writing from the angle of someone else,” he explains. “I did the same for ‘Nightclub’. I was reading online about people trying to get into nightclubs, and when they were saying, ‘His name’s Frank, he’s a friend of mine’, I was getting things from that. I have always done that, but maybe my points of reference have been books in the past that have been clouded in metaphor.”
Their previous album provides a stark contrast in approach with the poetic, wistful reflection of a song called ‘The Writer’ that paints the picture of the evocative wordsmith. This time around, things are a bit more instinctive, and part of that is down to Tom opening himself up to a new writing collaborator for the first time in the shape of former Dork cover star and certified pop legend CMAT.
“It’s a natural process,” he enthuses. “Working with CMAT definitely helped. She’s very conversational and to the point, and she likes to have a very direct idea of ‘This is what the song’s about, and we won’t divert from that’. We have the parameters of where we can go with it, but ultimately, this song is about this. You have a laser-point vision of what it is. I’ve only done it a couple of times. It’s like ‘Charlemagne’; that’s a massive tune, but it’s about nothing, really. It’s just words that sound good together. These ones do have a charm. There’s a place for both. Every song on this album has an exact point of what it’s about. There are no metaphors. Every track has a subject. I did it a few times and liked the results and then saw her ramp that up another notch with ‘I Like Your Look’ and the playful side of it. Anything can be a song. It’s forcing myself to not write the same love songs.”
"I heard CMAT's music in a record shop in Brighton, and I was like, who the fuck is this?"
Tom Ogden
For the rest of the band, the embracing of humour and overheard anecdotes and fantasy vignettes offered a clear way out of any notion of lack of inspiration that they feared the singer might be having.
“From our point of view of being in it but not being in it, the idea was you always used to write songs about how you were feeling and at the beginning of this album, it was like fucking hell we’ve done really well, we’re a successful band and really lucky, what the fuck can I write about?” offers Joe. “It was almost a struggle at the beginning trying to find a theme for it all. Tom kept on saying we need to find a theme. You were trying to hook your emotions onto something in order to write tunes. It actually worked out that those ideas were there, but they didn’t need to be something you’d emotionally gone through.”
Gradually, it became clear what the album was about. “Every song is self-contained, and it’s loads of little short stories,” says Tom. “That’s what the album became about, in a way that’s the theme you’ve got to without really realising. It’s easy to try and write songs about being in love and being out of love. I’ve done that a lot. If you’re not truly honest and falling into cliches, then you’re covering the same ground. I was conscious not to cover the same ground. The song ‘Mothers’ is about mine and Joe’s friendship. I’ve never written a song like that before. I was forcing myself to look at other artists like Wolf Alice, who have a song called ‘Bros’, and I’ll make a note in my phone and go, ‘What are their songs about?’”
Feeding off other artists had a positive impact in a more literal sense as the band brought in alt-pop dance producers Jungle to complement production once again helmed by longtime producer James Skelly of The Coral at his studio in Liverpool. “The first session we did was with Jungle,” says Tom excitedly. “They did ‘Nightclub’ and ‘What Can I Say After I’m Sorry?’. There was a tone within that that we liked and we took that away and applied that to the other things.
“The other thing was us five playing in a room, which is the energy of the band. When we’ve been busy touring, sometimes the first time the lads have heard the song is in the studio. This is how it goes, fuck it, Joe will go in and put a basic beat down, and everyone’s building their parts bit by bit. Sometimes that is good but sometimes you don’t get your best work out of that. This time we didn’t do any of that. Every song was jammed in a room beforehand, which is weirdly what we used to do when we started the band. ‘Charlemagne’ was done like that. We’ve captured a bit of that early energy again now.”
With fresh energy and impetus, the band beefed up the dancefloor vibes of the record. “Before any of it, I said I wanted it to sound like a party record,” explains Tom. “We deviated from that and started writing some other songs, but we came full circle and ended up with a record that you can dance to.”
It all comes back to the subtle reset the band has undergone to make this a thrilling new era. “We came at it slightly differently. Those tiny changes made it feel fresh in the studio,” adds Joe. “The majority of it was done in Liverpool with James again, and that’s great because we’ve got such a great relationship with James. That’s got real positives but the negatives are you sort of feel you’re going through the same thing again. You’re in the same position you were in three years ago. The technique has changed, and that was enough of a thing to make it feel fun. The element of us as a band comes through that. We’re tight enough now that we can play live together to a degree where it’s good enough for a record. That sound comes across in the tracks.”
The album is filled with bangers, like the disco vibes of ‘Nightclub’ and the outrageous new romantic expressionism of the CMAT-featuring ‘I Like Your Look’. The nightclub as a concept and as a guiding star for the record was frequently in their minds. Sticky floors, dodgy carpets, questionable tunes, glorious memories.
“42s gets a shout-out on ‘Mothers’; it’s an indie club in Manchester,” explains Tom. “The lyric in ‘Nightclub’ is about that: ‘The queue’s half a mile fuck waiting half an hour just to get inside’. The queue would be right up the road, and we’d be like, we know someone in there, and he’s got a wristband and can change our wristband over and sneak in. We’ve done all the stuff. We’ll have to split up into two. Everyone has done that. Even my mum, listening to the song, said she can relate to that because she did that in the 80s.”
80s vibes are present in sound as well as parental memories on the stunning album highlight ‘I Like Your Look’, including the wonderfully bratty chic chorus of “I think your flares are so cute, I like your look”. If there was ever a lyric so apt for a band so famously sartorially sharp as Blossoms, then it’s this one. The song is outrageous, brash and brilliantly funny, with Tom doing a classic 80s spoken word rap. Oh, and it sounds like peak pop Spandau Ballet (Another famous Gary there. Maybe ask your mum). Working with CMAT was an invigorating shot in the arm for a band revelling in trying new things.
"I wanted the album to sound like a party record."
Tom Ogden
“She was a force of nature,” laughs Tom. “I heard her music in a record shop in Brighton the previous December when we were on tour, and I was like, who the fuck is this? Every tune for six songs was fucking amazing. I was blown away. We went and got drunk that night and we stayed in touch. She came to watch us do The Smiths thing with Rick Astley at Glastonbury and hung out. We were in the middle of writing our record and said, we should write together. I had never written with anybody for Blossoms. I’d always write the songs and bring them in. Five albums in, I was more open-minded than I ever had been in terms of bringing someone in. I absolutely loved her work and was fascinated by it. I wanted to see what this is. We had booked this week in Anglesey in an Airbnb by the beach. We thought we’d lock ourselves away, take all the equipment and us five would write.”
Opening himself up to bringing someone else in allowed the band to change up the way they recorded in the studio as well. “I used to always write the songs at home,” continues Tom. “It was after reading a book by David Byrne where he said that Talking Heads came up with “This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’ by swapping instruments and being locked away and coming up with stuff from scratch. We never do that, so I was open to it. I was up for anything at that point. It turned out that that was the only week that CMAT could do, and she came away with us.
“Everyone had their own room, and we had an amazing time. We’d go swimming in the sea every morning, come back and cook a bit of food and talk about what we wanted our songs to be about. She had loads of books with her. For ‘I Like Your Look’, we tried doing something else, and it wasn’t really happening. We got to 9 o’clock and we were a bit deflated and thinking you’re just shit, so she said right, everyone grab a book and start shouting out things you think could be song titles. Everyone was saying stuff, and then Joe shouts out ‘I Like Your Look’ from his book”
The song is high camp and ultra fun in the spirit of the album and the strong personality of CMAT and how that fed into the fun vibe the band were looking for. “It’s about people who wear high fashion stuff like Gucci but who also wear stuff that could be found in a charity shop and a £5 bin,” says Tom. “This is what the song should be about. It kind of just snowballed, and in 45 minutes, we wrote the song. It was like nothing I ever experienced before. It was off-the-cuff energy with all six of us. The lads went into the other room and worked out the groove while me and CMAT stayed in the other room and wrote the lyrics and the hook. It was really, really fun. That’s my favourite tune on the album because it’s so different. It’s a lot of people’s favourite.”
The expressive freedom encapsulated in songs like ‘Nightclub’ and ‘I Like Your Look’ and the spirit these groove filled dance pop songs instilled in the band momentarily prompted them to think about leaving off perhaps the most classic Blossoms song they’ve ever written in ‘Perfect Me’ “It’s a mad one ‘Perfect Me’ because it almost didn’t make the album. You listen to it now and you’d think what were you thinking?”, asks Joe. “We felt it had more of a trademark Blossoms sound,” says Tom. “It’s got the riff and the keys and the guitar, and it’s in that world where ‘Nightclub’ and ‘I Like Your Look’ feel like different beasts to me. I was personally craving something new where ‘Perfect Me’ felt like what you’d expect from Blossoms. The lyrics give it that extra edge. If that song was just a love song, it wouldn’t have the weight that it’s got.”
Lyrically, the song is a masterclass from Tom as he reflects on getting older and having a different perspective on the world. “That’s exactly what that’s about. I don’t think I could have written that song when I was 21. You’re a bit more fearless, then. I’ll probably get to the point where I don’t care at all, which is the ultimate goal to not care what people think, but ‘Perfect Me’ comes from the pressure you put on yourself to achieve perfection in life.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n75ftaRT8RA
The song ‘Perfect Me’ is illustrative of the kind of questions that bands have to ask themselves when they get to a certain level with a devoted audience about how they can make music that is creatively fulfilling without losing the essence of what made them for the fans who are so devoted.
“You want to strive and push yourself and we had ‘Perfect Me’ as a song that sounded like the old Blossoms,” admits Joe. “It’s a weird thing where you try to push yourself but want to also give something to the fans. The worst thing is if you release something and they go oh, that’s not a Blossoms record, and you don’t want to release another album that’s just another Blossoms record. You have to tread this fine line between expressing yourself and pushing yourself musically and retaining a sound that the fans want.”
“That tune will divide people, but all music does,” counters Tom, talking about ‘I Like Your Look’. “You put ‘Perfect Me’ out and some people will love it but say it sounds the fucking same. You need to trust your own gut. You can’t get too caught up in what other people say because you start making decisions based out of fear, and that’s when you make shit work.”
The opening track on the album, ‘Big Star’, references the band’s desire for greater fame and fortune tempered with the fact that, actually, maybe they don’t want that at all. The song is about Tom eavesdropping on a conversation in LA with a music journalist called Marvin from Raygun magazine, where he promised that he could make someone a big star. In a clever lyrical twist at the end, though, the question changes from ‘Come and make me a big star’ to ‘Do I really wanna be a big star?’ a question that the band have grappled with over recent years as they considered moving out of Stockport and the different parameters and demands of success as well as fan devotion in the hyper social age. It’s a nagging doubt that is always there.
"You can't get too caught up in what other people say because you start making decisions based out of fear, and that's when you make shit work"
Tom Ogden
“I probably wouldn’t have written that line otherwise,” admits Tom. “You don’t know until that happens. You aspire to be this thing, but if it bled so much into your personal life, it would probably be a nightmare. We’re not at that level, hence why I’m writing a song like ‘Big Star’. Harry Styles couldn’t write ‘Big Star’. Do I really wanna be fairly well-known? We’ve got another level we could potentially go to, which is like, ok, what does that entail?”
From Joe’s perspective, the band don’t have to worry too much about harmful intrusion from over-eager fans. “As a band, we’re quite open, and we talk about our lives on a weekly basis on our podcast,” he says. “Sometimes if you’re open to a degree it becomes boring for people. If you’re this mysterious band that often disappears then people thrive on it and look for it, we’re so open that I don’t think that idea of things interests people as much.”
“Sometimes we’ll go somewhere and we will get mobbed and loads of people will come up to you and it is quite anxiety inducing at times. 99.9% of people are really nice but there’s still an element where this doesn’t really feel normal,” adds Tom. “We went out this weekend for our mate’s 30th, and they were like, it’s mad everyone’s staring at you, and you’re just used to that. That’s been your life for eight years. There are levels to it. If you were that next level big star you couldn’t go anywhere. It depends where you are in your life. I’d probably be more equipped for it now.”
So, Blossoms are definitely Big Stars, but not THAT kind of Big Star. The band find themselves in the rarified position where they can now do exactly what they want. They are currently plotting to go back on the road with a newfound vigour and energy. “There’s a lot of fun you can have with this record live. We’re going to throw everything at it,” promises Tom. It’s clear that Blossoms’ star power is doing just fine and they are thriving on their own with a glorious new album and an infectious playful spirit running through everything they do, from Madness-style comic knees-up in videos featuring cameos from famous Garys and football managers to new threads, stylish new friends and a commitment to the glorious ridiculousness of pop nonsense in full effect. ‘Gary’ is the sound of Blossoms reborn. ■
Taken from the September 2024 issue of Dork. Blossoms’ album ‘Gary’ is out 20th September.
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