I love music. I love all kinds of music. It doesn’t have to be a certain genre or style, it just has to make me feel something.

One of my favourite bands is Blossoms, who I was delighted to discover when they were heavily promoted by Radio X (formerly XFM) in 2016. The five piece from Stockport have a knack for catchy riffs and singalong tunes, with every song written by frontman Tom Ogden. Their self-titled debut album reached number one, as did their third effort Foolish Loving Spaces in 2020. On 29th April 2022, the band released their latest: Ribbon Around The Bomb. Here’s my review.

It was soon after 6am on Friday and I was hauling myself into my car for the half an hour drive to work, contemplating the day ahead. It had been a hell of a week. The new Blossoms album had been released at midnight, though, and I was looking forward to having the time to give it a good listen on my journey.

The best thing about music is its ability to take you out of yourself. No matter what you’ve got going on, a song can change your mood in an instant. The very best songs transport you to somewhere else entirely. One of my heroes, Alex Turner from the Arctic Monkeys, sums it up:

“Some of my favourite records, to me, feel like places that you can sort of go to and move in to for a bit.”

Within a few seconds of hearing the strings of short instrumental opener The Writer’s Theme, I had a smile on my face. When it beautifully segued into Ode To NYC – a love letter to the Big Apple and one of four singles released ahead of the full album – I had the feeling that the world isn’t such a bad place after all. The rest of my car journey was serene, totally enraptured by the tunes coming from the radio.

Ribbon Around The Bomb, the title track and my favourite of the four singles, is followed by The Sulking Poet, a highlight of the album and a song inspired by a Blossoms fan account on Instagram that referred to frontman and principle songwriter Tom Ogden as such due to him often appearing to have a ‘face like a slapped arse’ in interviews.

Next is Born Wild, which for me brings back memories of the band’s previous chart topping album Foolish Loving Spaces. Then it’s The Writer, which carries a more than passing resemblance to the Oasis track Half The World Away.

Everything About You keeps up the album’s theme of marrying intriguing, inward-looking lyrics with cheerful melodies. Care For is a disco-inspired joy, with Ogden waxing lyrical about his new wife. Cinerama Holy Days has perhaps the album’s most repeatable chorus, while Edith Machinist has those wonderful strings adding the cherry on top of the cake.

At 7 minutes, Visions is one of the longest songs Blossoms have ever made and contains its most talked about lyric:

Was I complete at 23?

Visions by Blossoms

Then, with another instrumental lasting less than minute, the appropriately titled The Last Chapter brings us home.

This is an album that I think will prove as pivotal to the longevity of Blossoms as Humbug was to Arctic Monkeys. An evolution, rather than a revolution. The sound of a band maturing and learning with every new track. Work on a fifth record is apparently already underway and I for one can’t wait to hear more. Ribbon Around The Bomb is an album they should be very proud of.

Listen to Ribbon Around The Bomb by Blossoms on all usual musical streaming services, including Apple Music. You can buy the album from their official store here.