Pip Blom have today shared ‘Kiss Me By Candlelight’, the latest track to be taken from their forthcoming third album ‘Bobbie’ following the single ‘Is This Love?’ ft. Alex Kaparanos. The band have also added further headline dates and a run of in stores around release in October.
Blom’s partner and vocalist of fellow Dutch indie band Personal Trainer, Willem Smit, features on the track which is lifted from an unreleased project from the pair.
LISTEN TO ‘KISS ME BY THE CANDLELIGHT’ | WATCH THE VIDEO
Talking about the track, which recalls Metronomy with its minimal, funky disco pop, Pip said:
“Long before Willem (from Personal Trainer) and I started seeing each other we had written a song together. We were 16 and barely knew one another. It was uncomfortable and we were both really shy. but I’ve always really really liked the track. Over the years we’ve been writing stuff on and off. It wasn’t always easy cause both have very different ways of working and aren’t really used to writing with someone else, but we’ve managed to write some of my favourite songs together. It’s funny how there are always parts in the tracks that we’ve made together that are written for the other person. Melodies, sounds or rhythms, you know what the other person likes, and want them to like what you write. So when Dave asked me if I’d ever thought about writing a track with Willem I didn’t have to think long. ‘Kiss Me By the Candlelight’ was a song we had written not that long ago. It was a perfect fit for the album. It’s danceable, a bit quirky, and a perfect blend of the two of us.”
♦♦♦
• ‘BOBBIE’ IS RELEASED ON OCTOBER 20TH • ‘BOBBIE’ TRACK-LIST • PRE-ORDER ‘BOBBIE’ •
For their third album, Bobbie, Pip Blom, the band’s namesake and main writer, decided to rip it up and start again. After making her name as one of the brightest indie rock singers around through two albums and a lauded live show honed over gruelling years of touring, the new album sees her and the band take a delightful left turn into thumping, carefree synth pop.
While admitting to the cliché of a guitar-orientated band “grabbing the synths” for album three, this new direction had a real and genuine draw for Blom and foremost in her mind was cult 2010s English pop band Micachu and the Shapes. For their previous albums, Blom wrote songs on the guitar, hoping that the studio process would then allow her to live out her pop dreams through final flourishes added during the recording process. “But we were always then running out of time,” she remembers, “and they ended up as just guitar-y albums.” For Bobbie, work with synthesisers and computers began from the very beginning, and she recruited producer Dave McCracken in a co-writer role to make sure the vision was fully realised.
To immerse herself in this new way of working, Blom worked on the album in separate, intensive bursts of creativity, based around a series of non-stop five-day studio jaunts in her native Netherlands. The songs were then sent to McCraken – whose credits include Jay-Z and Kanye West – to gain a little more “clarity” and be trimmed into the tight, punchy pop hits that make up the new album.
Also on hand to help her achieve her longtime vision were a pair of collaborators that contribute to two of the album’s highlights. Blom’s partner and vocalist of fellow Dutch indie band Personal Trainer, Willem Smit, joins her on the duet ‘Kiss Me By The Candlelight’, a song lifted from an unreleased project from the pair that recalls Metronomy in its minimal, funky disco pop. Elsewhere, McCracken helped her push through initial shyness to reach out to Alex Kapranos of former Pip Blom tourmates Franz Ferdinand, who hops on the album’s giddy highlight, ‘Is This Love?’.
As well as a musical eureka moment, Bobbie is also a lyrical evolution for Blom. “I always find lyrics difficult because I’m not a native speaker,” she says. “I find it hard to spend time on them because it feels a bit forced.” For the new album, she wrote what she calls ‘guide books’ of the general themes and ideas wanting to be tackled, before teaming up with McCracken to sculpt them into songs.
Despite the huge strides taken on album three, it appears to confirm that Bobbie is only the next step in Pip Blom’s journey, and far from a final destination. “I wanna start again,” she and the band sing together to send the album off, revolutionising their sound in the most thrilling of new beginnings. So, so much more is sure to come.
♦♦♦
Pip Blom’s live show is always exciting and with this new sound we can’t see what the now trio, do next! This summer the band ope for Blur in their hometown of Amsterdam.
♦ LIVE DATES ♦
