British alt-pop band Blossoms, consisting of Tom Ogden (lead vocals/guitar), Charlie Salt (bass), Josh Dewhurst (lead guitar), Joe Donovan (drums) and Myles Kellock (keyboards), released their fifth studio album “Gary” via ODD SK Recordings.
This marks their first album in two years since the 2022 album “Ribbon Around the Bomb”.
Also, it is the first release as an independent artist after leaving Virgin EMI.
The album comprises a 10-track, produced by James Skelly, featuring collaboration with Irish singer-songwriter CMAT who co-wrote and performed background vocals on “I Like Your Look”.
The album title was named after an eight-foot-tall fibreglass gorilla that was stolen from a Scottish garden centre.
The band frontman Tom Ogden said of the album “The heart of this record is about the five of us recording live in a room together for the first time in years. We wanted to capture the energy of what it's like when five friends decide to start a band and make music together.”
He continued, “We collaborated more than we ever have on this record too, and alongside working with long-time collaborator James Skelly, we brought in Josh and CMAT (Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson). We hired an AirBnB on the seafront in Anglesey and locked ourselves away for the writing session with Ciara and it was one of the most inspiring few days we've had as a band. During the writing process, we were listening to a lot of Bowie, Blondie, and Hall & Oates.”
He explained, “The album tracks themselves are based on different stories, mostly from personal experience. On 'Big Star' after seeing a well-known music journalist in the Chateau Marmont, I debate going over and introducing myself but then shyness gets the better of me and I don't.”
He added, “'I Like Your Look' is a tipping of the hat to Blondie's 'Rapture' and a wink to Joan Baez 'Time Rag', and lyrically it explores a tongue-in-cheek approach to high fashion. 'Mothers' is an ode to my and Joe's friendship and it references the fact that our mothers were friends back in the 80s.'”
The band explained track-by-track for the album via Apple Music.
“Big Star” Tom Ogden: “I wrote this after being in the Chateau Marmont hotel in Los Angeles. This guy walked in [the lobby] and was having a meeting about this magazine. I Googled him while I was sat there, and it turns out he's this big writer in America who's got this music magazine and has done since the early '90s. And I was like, 'Should I go over to him and be like, “I'm in a band”?' But then I bottled it. I like the playfulness of the lyrics. I think that was after working with CMAT, it influenced me to be like, 'You can write something that's really direct.' I was literally sat there thinking it and then I just turned it into a song. Not going over to him is kind of very us and very me.”
“What Can I Say After I'm Sorry?” TO: “This was the song that made me think, 'Oh, we could work with Jungle.' The sonic was influenced by Jungle really. I wrote it on the piano, it was a bit more R&B when I wrote it, maybe like Outkast or something. The title was from an old Nat King Cole record but what the song is about is when I'm in a bit of a rut and my emotions are bleeding into my relationship. I imagine it's probably quite challenging to be with someone who's in a rut. There's not that much that the other person can do to snap you out of it. It's me saying, 'What can I say after I'm sorry?', in terms of, 'I wish I wasn't like this sometimes.'”
“Gary” Tom Ogden: “I was driving home and the news came on: 'A giant fiberglass gorilla has been stolen from a garden center in Carluke, Scotland. The hunt is on for Gary the Gorilla.' I went home and started reading about it and then wrote the song in half an hour on the acoustic guitar. It was as if the song always existed, I just had to wait for that moment of inspiration to come over me.”
Charlie Salt: “Tom does this really clever thing where he'll take something quite daft and it'll be juxtaposed with this lovely arrangement and melody underneath. It immediately [sounded] like a classic Blossoms tune and it's got this strange emotion…and you're always thinking about the gorilla itself.”
Josh Dewhurst: “We bought our own Gary and he lives at the studio. Every day, when you get to work, you see him and you're like, 'How are you doing, Gary? You all right?'”
“I Like Your Look” Tom Ogden: “This was written with CMAT in Anglesey, Wales. The plan was for me and the lads to go away just for some time on our own. CMAT was going to come and write with me in Stockport but the dates didn't work, so she was like, 'I'll just come to Wales with you.' One night, we'd been trying something else and it wasn't really working so Ciara [Mary-Alice Thompson, aka CMAT] was like, 'Right, everyone get a book and start shouting things out from the book that you think could be song titles.' Joe went, 'I like your look,' and I was like, 'That's good, it should be a song about fashion, it should be a bit like “Pop Muzik” by M.' Ciara was like, 'Yeah, you should do '80s rapping like “Time Rag” by Joan Baez or Blondie's “Rapture.”' It was a really fast burst of creativity. We'd never written like that before, it was really fun and inspiring. Everyone brought something to the table. I think you can hear that on the record.”
“Nightclub” Tom Ogden: “This was written after reading a blog about a guy who was in love with his friend's girlfriend. I had the title and I started reading about people trying to blag their way into nightclubs. It was inspired by my own personal experience of going to nightclubs growing up and also reading online about other people's experiences. Working with Jungle definitely brought the best out of this song. Josh Lloyd-Watson put his thing on it. He was like, 'Imagine you're female backing singers in the '60s,' and we'd be doing all this stuff. He'd chop it up and flip the song on its head.”
“Perfect Me” Tom Ogden: “Again, this was written as us five in the room very, very fast. I came into the rehearsal room one morning and Josh was messing around on a Moog sequencer. He pressed a button, and it had a bit of that Who, 'Baba O'Riley' thing about it. Immediately, I was like, 'I can hear these chords underneath this.'”
Charlie Salt: “It might have been the first one we recorded for the album and we were sat on it for so long. It became a little bit stale. James Skelly always stood by it and considered it a single.”
Tom Ogden: “Yeah, it had the energy but we shunned it a little bit. We came back with fresh ears six months later and we were like, 'Hang on a minute, this is really good.'”
“Mothers” Tom Ogden: “I wanted to have our version of 'Bros' by Wolf Alice, a song about friendship. Me and Joe have been best mates since we were 12. Our mothers were actually friends in the '80s, and I had a line about that in another song, so when I started writing this verse idea about me and Joe growing up, I was like, 'Oh, what about the lyrics that I wrote about our mothers in the '80s?' I probably refined it over a month and a half and went back and tweaked this lyric, changed the verse melody, pulled the words from a different song I'd written.”
Josh Dewhurst: “When we recorded it, we kept on the family theme. My dad's a pianist. Oftentimes, when we're in the studio properly recording, he'll just come down for the craic because he's a genius and also he's funny as hell.”
Tom Ogden: “Josh's dad suggested these insane chords that we would've never come across ourselves. It was a nice, full-circle thing, a song about me and Joe references our mothers, and then Josh's dad played on it. It's very wholesome.”
“Cinnamon” Tom Ogden: “This was written out of a jam in the room. This is the most collaborative record we've done in terms of writing, we were just jamming in there. It started off with me, Josh, and Chaz and I was hearing it [as] more Vampire Weekend but, when we came back and worked on it the next day, Joe made it more us, helped it become more of an anthem.”
Joe Donovan: “I imagined it in a field at a festival, that big, euphoric vibe.”
“Slow Down” Tom Ogden: “'Slow Down' is only one of three personal songs about my relationship on this album. It usually makes up the bulk of records whereas, this time, I've made an effort to write about other stuff. This is saying, in a relationship, we needed to take a moment and slow down and appreciate each other a bit more. We took our eye off the ball in terms of looking after each other a little bit.”
“Why Do I Give You the Worst of Me?” Tom Ogden: “Often, I can put too much weight on stuff with the band being my source of happiness. I don't think it's necessarily a healthy way to live your life. It's that thing where your partner always sees the worst of you, warts and all. I was speaking to Ciara about it because we were writing songs and trying to be very open. I was just explaining what was going on and I think my wife Katie had said, 'Oh, why do I always get the worst of you?' because it was like I'd gone away and come to life writing. At home, I'd been struggling writing, basically. She wanted that from me at home as well, and then Ciara just started writing it from things I was saying. It's quite a personal song. It was quite intense.”
