Stockport, UK · alternative · indie pop · indie

Blossoms

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Stockport five-piece who turned synth-lined indie-pop into a run of UK number-one albums — melodic, unhurried, and impossible to leave a field before.

Blossoms formed in Stockport in 2013 as Tom Ogden (vocals, guitar), Charlie Salt (bass), Josh Dewhurst (lead guitar), Joe Donovan (drums) and Myles Kellock (keyboards, synthesizer), all of whom grew up within two miles of each other and were born at the town's Stepping Hill Hospital. Ogden and Donovan met on a school trip in 2005; the others met through work. The band played its first show at Manchester's Night and Day Café in April 2013.

The band takes its name from the Blossoms pub on Bramhall Lane in Stockport, after Donovan noticed Ogden and Salt separately describing it as a good band name. Early rehearsals took place at Salt's grandfather's scaffolding yard, used free of charge, and the yard's image appears on the cover of the band's debut album.

The five-piece pair guitar-led indie rock with prominent keyboards and synthesisers, and their songs tend toward direct, hook-driven writing. They signed to Skeleton Key Records, run by the Coral's James Skelly, in 2014, and all quit their day jobs that autumn to work on the band full-time.

Their self-titled debut album appeared in 2016, reaching number one in the UK after the band placed fourth on the BBC's Sound of 2016 list. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize the following year, alongside a nomination for British Breakthrough Act at the Brit Awards. Subsequent albums have also topped the chart, giving Blossoms five UK top-five albums in total, four of them number ones. The band remain closely identified with Greater Manchester, playing large hometown shows alongside touring.

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