Album Review: Welcome Break by Pip Blom

Dutch quartet Pip Blom's second album Welcome Break--named after the chain of British motorway service stations--offers another prime example of the eponymous singer/songwriter Pip Blom's unerring ability to craft sumptuous melodic guitar pop. Inspired by life on the road before COVID struck, Blom wrote 20 songs over three months and then selected her favourite 16 to take the studio for the band (which includes her brother Tender Blom) to work on. Self-produced and recorded over three weeks at Big Jelly Studios in Ramsgate UK with engineer Al Harle, it's an album that doesn't deviate too much from the Pip Blom template, because, well, why would they? There aren't many artists around who can play this style of music and make it sound so fresh and effortless.

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Welcome Break offers both a thematic break from the last year-and-a-half, and a sonic departure from the last decade, or two, of musical trends; blending and channeling '90s britpop and the music of the Riot Grrrl movement with ease. Crunchy guitar hooks and manifesto-like declarations ("You don't want this / You need to change this") on opener "You Don't Want This" instantly evokes Sleater-Kinney 's Dig Me Out. Meanwhile, the ability of lead singer Pip to effortlessly alternate between snarling self-deprecation ("I Know I'm not easy to like") and dead-pan put-downs ("Everything you wanted makes me so tired") is reminiscent of Liz Phair on her landmark debut Exile in Guyville.

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