If you notice more than the usual buzz in the Northern Quarter this bank holiday weekend, it may have something to do with Blossoms. The Stockport band are back with their fourth studio album released this weekend, and to celebrate have booked out the NQ's iconic Band on the Wall venue for two intimate back-to-back shows on Saturday that have fans at fever pitch.
The band's frontman Tom Ogden says it feels good to be getting back out on the road and meeting those fans' eyeballs again after a forced two year hiatus through the coronavirus lockdowns. It gave the band the chance to record their new album, Ribbon Around The Bomb, which they're ready to perform live and to celebrate.
It comes at the start of what is set to be a hectic summer for Blossoms - Tom, Charlie Salt, Joe Donovan, Myles Kellock and Josh Dewhurst - with headline festival appearances across May, June and July. Tom beams: "You have months and months of doing only bits and bits and bobs, and then bang it all happens.
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"But it's nice. Especially four albums in, it's nice to still have that buzz around it all. We always like to do nice intimate shows around the album launch, to give the hardcore fans that chance to celebrate with us. The Band on the Wall shows will be a real mix of songs though, some from the new album as well as a bit of a Blossoms' greatest hits."
The new album sees Tom "dig a little deeper" having had the time in lockdown to reflect on the rise of band. He says: "Those first few years were a bit of a blur, it was only in lockdown we had time to reflect and especially around 2019 I felt that imposter syndrome, I started over-analysing everything in the shows, we've come a long way to be here, and I think I've learned to be more confident as a frontman, and to just enjoy myself more and living in the now."
Tom recently told of how in June 2019, preparing to play to a hometown crowd of 15,000 at Stockport County, he spent the run-up to the show fighting his imposter syndrome. "My head was elsewhere," he told the Press Association. "I was obsessing over the fine details. I was thinking, ‘I need to be a better frontman'."
He says: "I’m quite self-deprecating really. I went through a period of time where I felt a little bit down about myself and didn’t feel like I was myself. I’d lost a bit of what made me happy, which was weird. But everyone goes through these kinds of times at different points in their lives and songwriting does help you."
That sense of self-doubt had been lurking since the band’s debut album went to number one back in 2016, winning them the approval of hometown heroes Johnny Marr and Ian Brown, and a legion of fans. Since their rapturous homecoming show, Ogden has faced his anxieties and channelled them into his songwriting.
The results are audible on Ribbon Around The Bomb, their forthcoming fourth record, once again produced by James Skelly of The Coral. As he tells it, the pandemic forced Blossoms to "put the brakes on."
"I looked inwards a little bit and wrote songs about what it’s like to do all that at such a young age.
"There’s a lyric in the last track called Visions which goes, ‘Was I complete at 23?’ which sums it up to be honest. I had just got with Katie, who I am now married to, and we had just got a number one album. I was 23 and I hadn’t had a chance to take stock, appreciate it and look back."
Ogden’s life has changed since then. He is now 28 and married to salon owner Katie – their wedding took place at Stockport Town Hall, naturally. People recognise him in the street and there is a certain level of expectation when Blossoms release music.
"As the songwriter, I carry a lot of weight in terms of writing the songs," he muses. "If I don’t write the songs it could all fall apart.
"I am a bit of a worrier. That’s what I’m like. So I have a tendency to go to the worst case scenario, which is something I have got a lot better at."
Ogden got to grips with his worries just before lockdown. But some habits are hard to break.
"I would see one person in the crowd who looked bored and then that would just throw me for the whole gig,” he recalls. “Even though there are like 15,000 other people who are loving it!"
But Ogden is loathe to complain. "Obviously, no one wants to hear someone in a band moaning about being in a band, because it’s amazing. Don’t get me wrong.
"But sometimes you lose sight of what makes you happy and you have to reset things and appreciate what you have got. The pandemic has definitely helped to do that.
"It made us all appreciate how far we have come and how great it is to do what we do. It’s given us a newfound love for it."
With the album already winning rave reviews and appointed BBC Radio 2's Album of the Week, it looks on course to be another chart-topper for the band who have had a seriously meteoric rise in music since first forming in 2013. And Tom, while taking nothing for granted, says they will definitely be in the mood to party if it does hit that coveted number one spot next week.
Before that there will also be the now-traditional album playback at the Stockport Plaza for the lads on Tuesday, May 3. Tom says: "It's just become a tradition now that we play it all back to front in our home town."
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