There’s local pride, and then there’s going over the top. Blossoms’ initial success was greeted by their home town with the addition of “Home of Blossoms” placards to existing Stockport road signage, and by the railway station running updates on the release of their debut album on its departure boards. Their debut topped the UK charts and won a Mercury nomination, so clearly one didn’t have to be from Stockport to feel their drivetime-in-indie-clothes was worth persevering with.
If the second album is meant to be the difficult one, then Blossoms appear not to have noticed. There is no attempt at radical change here. In fact, there’s barely any attempt at change. The FM radio sheen is still there, the rhythms are four-to-the-floor, and it doubtless sounds great in a tailback on the M62.
There’s been a certain amount of blurb about frontman Tom Ogden’s “emotional honesty” and “lyrical progression”, but you’d be hard pressed to hail Cool Like You as a triumph of lyricism. In Unfaithful, he cribs TS Eliot’s “April is the cruellest month” line, but it suggests nothing more than an ear for a good line to nick: this isn’t The Waste Land rewritten, though the song’s musical borrowings from Blondie’s Call Me are evidence of good taste in their cherrypicking from the 80s.
Blossoms are best when pace and directness keep the mind focused on their melodies and vigour: once they try their hands at ballads, blandness creeps in. And their strength with melodies makes you wish they would extend themselves more, because Cool Like You is a ready meal of an album: satisfying in the moment, but forgotten the minute it finishes.
