Album Review: Boat by Pip Blom

The Dutch quartet Pip Blom spent a couple years releasing home-recorded songs, mid-fi EPs, and the occasional single, all the while refining and honing their '90s indie rock-loving sound into something sleek, sharp, and powerful. When they went into the studio to record their first album, they were ready for their closeup, and the result is something special. Boat has all the hallmarks of classic indie rock -- loud/quiet dynamics, crashing cymbals, guitar overload, yearningly off-kilter vocals, and hooks that cut flesh while breaking hearts -- while never sounding like the youngsters in the band were doing a homework assignment for music class.

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Pip Blom is the songwriter and singer in the band Pip Blom. Rather than take a nom de plume for her musical outpourings, like Snail Mail or Japanese Breakfast, Pip's persona is front and centre which is surprising for a self-proclaimed introvert. Growing up an intensely shy child didn't perturb her from entering a songwriting competition in her teens, following in the musical footsteps of her father Erwin who is a member of Eton Crop (look them up - John Peel loved them, and rightly so).

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Since the dawn of the internet, multitasking has become a way of life. In her namesake four-piece band, 23-year-old Amsterdam native Pip Blom cleverly weaponizes lapses in concentration to craft perky, grunge-lite melodies. "I'll watch a documentary while playing guitar," she explained earlier this year. "When I play something on my guitar that stands out more than the documentary does, then that becomes something I should use." While she's immersed in stories about interesting people or mental illness (her preferred choice of docs), a hypnotic melody or peculiar chord progression pushes to the front.

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