22-year-old Amsterdam-based Pip Blom started writing, recording and releasing her own indie-pop tunes with a twist in 2016. Early songs, which were simply uploaded to the internet, quickly amassed thousands and thousands of plays – prompting Pip to recruit a band and start playing them live. In stepped brother Tender Blom on backing vocals and guitar, Darek Mercks on bass and Gini Cameron on drums, with Pip herself fronting on guitar on vocals. Since, the band have played more than a hundred gigs, rising from small pubs to the european festival circuit with performances at Eurosonic Noorderslag and The Great Escape – as well as being asked by the likes of Surfer Blood, Franz Ferdinand and The Breeders to join them on their various European tours.
The band’s energetic live show quickly pricked the ears of press and radio – with Vice’s music channel hailing Pip as ‘ready to join the ranks of 2018’s rising guitar acts’, and BBC 6 Music A-listing recent singles ‘I Think I’m In Love’ and ‘Pussycat’. The station’s DJs Marc Riley hailed the former as ‘perfect pop’ with Gideon Coe branding it ‘excellent’ and, elsewhere, on the UK’s most popular music station BBC Radio One, Pip Blom performed a live session at Maida Vale for Huw Stephens. Not bad going for someone whose early ambitions were to write a few songs and upload them to the internet in case people wanted to hear them.
Something special happened to Pip Blom at the tail end of last year. It was a busy twelve months that saw the release of her frenetic EP ‘Paycheck’, two A-Listed singles at 6 Music and support slots to the likes of The Breeders, Franz Ferdinand and Garbage. Capping that off, though, moments before stepping onstage at a sold out Lexington – the London stop-off on her debut UK headline tour – the band put pen to paper and signed to Heavenly Recordings.
This is a standing show.