Pip Blom

The Amsterdam group Pip Blom began as the solo project of the band's namesake, making intimate bedroom pop inspired by the lo-fi indie rock of the 1990s. When she expanded the band to a quartet, their sound grew more powerful and varied without losing that home-cooked feel. Their first two albums, 2019's Boat and 2021's Welcome Break, also showed a deep love and understanding for the hooky, punchy sounds of '90s alt-rock, while 2023's Bobbie branched out into synthesizer-led pop sounds. While in her early teens, Pip Blom entered a songwriting contest and wrote a batch of songs using a child's beginner guitar. Though she lost the contest, she gained a passion for making music that led to her working on both writing and learning guitar. She began to record skeletal, introspective indie rock D.I.Y.-style in her bedroom and released a batch of singles in 2016. Most of them were digital only; the "Hours"/"Truth" single was released on vinyl by Grunt Grunt a Go Go Records and Working on It by Paradiso Vinyl Club. After that prolific year, during which people began to take notice of the project, Blom decided to leave the bedroom, form a band, and perform live. She enlisted her brother Tender on backing vocals and guitar and her friends Casper van der Lans on bass and Gini Cameron on drums, and the group started playing shows and working on songs. Their first full-band track, "I Think I'm in Love," was issued in early 2017; "Babies Are a Lie" and "School" came out later in the year. Pip Blom's insistent brand of indie rock, which nodded to the sounds of the '90s, caught the attention of the Breeders, who were so impressed that they invited the band to support them on their 2018 European tour. Later that year, the group put out their first EP, the five-song Paycheck. The band soon signed to Heavenly Records and began recording an album with producer Dave McCracken, who was mainly known for his work with big names like Florence + the Machine and Depeche Mode. He and the group went for a much more stripped-down and immediate sound, focusing on Blom's heartfelt vocals, the wiry melodies, and the group's deft use of dynamics. Boat was mixed in a shipping container on the banks of the Thames by Dillip Harris and released by Heavenly in May 2019. The band headed out on an extensive tour, after which Blom returned to her parents' house and began writing songs inspired by her experiences on the road. She ended up with 20 and the full group demoed 16 of them, then they headed back to London to record. After a two-week stint in quarantine, the band entered Big Jelly Studios in Ramsgate with engineer Al Harle. Following the same basic template as their previous work, Pip Blom emerged with a poppier, more assured second album. Mixed in more conventional fashion this time by Caesar Edmunds, Welcome Break was issued in late 2021 by Heavenly Records. After a re-think about musical direction, Blom set aside guitars and began working almost exclusively with computers and synths while writing songs for album number three. She and the band recorded in intense bursts, sending the results to producer McCracken so that he could streamline the tracks. The finished result, 2023's album Bobbie, was the band's poppiest affair to date, adding Auto-Tuned vocals, disco-fied rhythms, and a guest appearance by Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos, while subtracting most of the indie rock abrasiveness from the mix. ~ Tim Sendra