Blossoms: Songs From The Wedding Cake

Ten years after the release of their debut album, Blossoms are writing about a very different kind of life.

The uncertainty, jealousy and romantic confusion that ran through some of Blossoms’ earliest songs have not disappeared completely, but the perspective has changed. Tom Ogden is married now, and the love, responsibility and commitment that come with building a life with somebody sit at the heart of the record. 

Blossoms are six albums into their career and heading towards their biggest headline shows, while the relationships and routines around them have naturally changed too. ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ is interested in what happens when the night out becomes the morning after, and the person you were once trying to impress becomes the person sitting beside you on the sofa with a ring on their finger.

Even its title brings that idea home. The Wedding Cake is the nickname for Stockport Town Hall, where Ogden got married. Stockport has followed Blossoms through almost every stage of their career, from the Plaza and Edgeley Park to the imagery surrounding their records, but here the connection feels particularly personal. The place they came from and the life Ogden has built there are folded into the same title.

It also brings some change to the band's setup. For the first time on a Blossoms studio album, James Skelly is no longer part of the production team. Alongside Rich Turvey, Skelly helped establish their sound from the debut onwards, remaining an important presence as they moved between synth-pop, disco, guitar music and the more introspective world of ‘Ribbon Around the Bomb’. Even when ‘Gary’ started opening the doors to other collaborators, Skelly remained involved.

This time Shawn Lee takes over. Best known in recent years as one half of Young Gun Silver Fox, Lee produces all ten tracks, with the album recorded entirely to tape. It is a sizeable change behind the scenes, but the result does not sound like Blossoms trying to tear themselves away from everything that came before. If anything, it shows how secure they have become in what a Blossoms record can be.

The road towards that independence began on their previous record ‘Gary’. Blossoms had spent years working within a familiar circle before deciding to deliberately bring other people into the process. Jungle's Josh Lloyd-Watson produced ‘What Can I Say After I'm Sorry?’ and ‘Nightclub’, while CMAT co-wrote ‘I Like Your Look’ and ‘Why Do I Give You the Worst of Me?’. The experience gave Ogden another way of approaching songwriting and showed the band that collaboration did not have to dilute their identity.

‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ takes the openness of ‘Gary’ and pushes it further. Lee is behind the desk, Rick Astley and Elijah Hewson appear at different points and Declan McKenna becomes a genuine creative partner on ‘Additional Driver’. Blossoms have discovered that allowing other people into their world does not make the band less recognisable. It gives them more places to go.

That collaborative spirit suits an album that otherwise feels unusually domestic. The band's own description of the record includes car insurance, trips to The Range, falling asleep in taxis, watching the Kardashians, dancing in the kitchen and growing older together. There is something deliberately ordinary about almost all of it. Blossoms are no longer searching for dramatic circumstances in order to write love songs. They are looking at the peculiar routines that form around two people once a relationship becomes part of everyday life.

‘Joke About Divorce’ establishes that tone immediately. The title sounds severe until you understand the story behind it: Ogden making exactly the wrong joke during an argument with his wife and realising almost instantly that it had not improved the situation. It is a small domestic disaster transformed into a Blossoms song, with Rick Astley adding another voice to the record. Astley's presence also feels natural rather than opportunistic. 

His relationship with Blossoms already stretches back through their live Smiths shows, so hearing him become part of the band's own music continues a friendship that has existed publicly for years. More importantly, his appearance establishes how features are used across the album. Nobody arrives simply to place another famous name on the tracklisting. The guests are allowed to enter the songs without overwhelming them.

‘Husband’ is the clearest example of how ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ turns the realities of married life into pop music. An over-the-top ode to matrimony, it takes the idea of settling down and treats it with the same sense of colour Blossoms once reserved for infatuation. Wobbly synths, warm acoustic guitars and an opening nod to The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ give way to a slightly surreal, sci-fi disco arrangement, making it one of the album’s strongest examples of how far the band are still willing to push their sound.

Lyrically, though, the song is rooted in something much more ordinary. Much of this record comes from day-to-day observations of what happens when you get married, settle into a shared life and gradually become a different version of yourself. The refrain of “we gotta work for it, baby” is the song’s lightbulb moment: an acknowledgement that love does not remain fixed simply because you have committed to somebody. Life changes, relationships change, and you have to change with them. That mixture of sincerity, humour and slightly oddball production is exactly where Blossoms work best.

From there, ‘Meet Me In Love’ pulls the album back towards the dancefloor. The rhythmic confidence that became increasingly important on ‘Gary’ remains central, with Blossoms sounding increasingly comfortable allowing disco, funk and pop to lead the way. Declan McKenna contributes backing vocals before taking a much larger role later on ‘Additional Driver’, another example of how casually the band now seem able to bring outside voices into their world.

That willingness to follow an idea wherever it leads also runs through ‘The Kardashians’. On paper, it is another subject that could easily tip into novelty, but Blossoms have become particularly good at taking the apparently ridiculous parts of everyday life seriously enough to write songs about them. Television, social media, trips to The Range and minor domestic arguments all belong on ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ because they belong to the life Ogden is writing about.

That approach reaches one of its peaks on ‘Additional Driver’, one of my two favourite songs on the album. Written with Declan McKenna after Ogden was involved in a minor collision while listed as the additional driver on his wife's insurance, it takes one of the least glamorous subjects imaginable and turns it into an indie-pop banger. The refrain of “should have got the 192” has been stuck in my head since the song was released, the kind of brilliantly specific line that makes the track feel unmistakably rooted in Blossoms’ world.

McKenna is particularly well suited to this version of the band. He shares Blossoms’ instinct for placing eccentric ideas inside immediately melodic songs, while the pair trading vocals makes the collaboration feel like a genuine meeting of two songwriters rather than a guest being dropped into an otherwise finished track. There is humour running through the whole thing, but it never comes at the expense of the melody or the feeling underneath it.

‘Additional Driver’ also feels like the clearest continuation of the collaborative freedom Blossoms discovered on ‘Gary’. Working with CMAT showed them what another songwriter could bring into the room, and here McKenna becomes part of the song’s identity rather than simply appearing on it. It is a small but important distinction, and another sign of a band becoming increasingly comfortable with ideas coming from outside the original five.

If ‘Additional Driver’ captures the album at its most playful, ‘Fall Into You’ is the other track I keep returning to. It strips away much of the humour surrounding the record and allows its romantic core to speak more directly. Blossoms have always been capable of writing love songs, but this one comes from a different place to the uncertainty of their earliest material. Ogden is no longer wondering whether a relationship might work; he is writing from inside one that already has.

That gives ‘Fall Into You’ a warmth that feels earned rather than idealised. By this point, the album has already shown us the bad jokes, car insurance and ordinary routines that come with sharing a life, so the affection here feels rooted in something real. Alongside ‘Additional Driver’, it is one of the moments where ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ works best for me.

Then comes ‘Guts’, one of the most heartfelt love songs Ogden has ever written. For all the odd details and humour scattered across the album, this is where he gets closest to simply saying what he means. There is little need for a joke or elaborate premise; the strength of the song comes from how openly he writes about giving yourself to another person and accepting the vulnerability that comes with it.

What makes ‘Guts’ particularly affecting is how settled that feeling sounds without becoming complacent. Some of Blossoms’ best early songs were driven by uncertainty, jealousy or heartbreak, but Ogden no longer needs those things to create emotional weight. Here, the stakes come from having somebody you genuinely cannot imagine your life without. It is a quieter kind of tension, but no less powerful.

‘Uma Thurman’ breaks that reflective sentimental mood with another burst of pop-culture energy. At less than three minutes, it is one of the album’s shortest and most immediate songs, full of the melodic turns and slightly surreal references Blossoms now seem happy to follow wherever they lead. That willingness to move between sincerity and absurdity is one of the record’s strengths.

Shawn Lee’s production helps hold those changes together. He does not attempt to rebuild Blossoms from the ground up; instead, he gives them room to move between polished pop, disco, acoustic warmth and stranger textures without the album feeling fragmented. For their first record without James Skelly behind the desk, there is remarkably little sense of a band searching nervously for a new identity.

'Where Have You Been My Whole Life?’ brings Elijah Hewson of Inhaler into the record. His appearance is brief, but that is precisely why it works. Like Rick Astley and McKenna elsewhere, Hewson is there because his voice suits the moment rather than because the song needs a headline feature. By this point, collaboration feels less like an experiment and more like a normal part of how Blossoms now make records.

The album then saves its most expansive moment for the end. At 6 minutes and 39 seconds, ‘The Deep End’ is comfortably the longest track on ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’, and the extra space allows Blossoms to revisit one of the musical ideas they first explored so effectively on ‘Foolish Loving Spaces’: layered vocal harmonies.

Those harmonies were one of the defining features of that album, helping Blossoms move beyond the synth-pop of their earlier work towards something richer and more expansive. On ‘The Deep End’, they return without making the song feel like an attempt to recreate 2020. Instead, the voices gradually build around Ogden as the arrangement opens out, giving the finale a scale that much of the album deliberately holds back from.

It is a fitting way to finish a record so preoccupied with the smaller parts of life. ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ spends much of its time finding meaning in television, marriage, car insurance, domestic routines and the strange habits that accumulate between two people. ‘The Deep End’ takes those intimate concerns and gives them the album’s biggest musical setting.

There are moments when the concentration on marriage and relationships means the record covers similar emotional ground, particularly in its second half. Another subject might occasionally have created more contrast, but the narrowness also feels deliberate. This is not an album trying to document every part of Ogden’s life; it is about one particular period and the collection of ordinary experiences that have come to define it.

The variety in the music prevents that focus from becoming monotonous. ‘Husband’ turns matrimony into sci-fi disco, ‘Additional Driver’ makes car insurance unexpectedly infectious, ‘Fall Into You’ gives the record one of its warmest moments and ‘Guts’ becomes one of the most open expressions of love Ogden has written. ‘Uma Thurman’ brings back the playfulness before ‘The Deep End’ stretches out into something more expansive.

In that sense, ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ feels like a meeting point between several eras of Blossoms. ‘Foolish Loving Spaces’ broadened their arrangements, ‘Ribbon Around the Bomb’ showed how reflective they could become, and ‘Gary’ brought back a sense of fun while encouraging them to work more freely with other people. Album six carries pieces of all three without sounding like a repeat of any of them.

The transition from James Skelly to Shawn Lee makes that especially significant. Skelly helped shape Blossoms for a decade, and his influence will always be part of the band they became, but this album shows they are now confident enough to step outside that familiar partnership without losing themselves. Lee does not reinvent Blossoms; he gives them the space to find new possibilities within a sound that is already unmistakably theirs.

Ogden’s songwriting has changed just as naturally. The girlfriend has become the wife, romantic uncertainty has given way to commitment, and Stockport Town Hall has become the Wedding Cake. The subjects have changed because his life has changed, but the instinct to find songs in the details has remained.

For me, ‘Additional Driver’, ‘Fall Into You’ and ‘Guts’ capture that evolution better than anything else on the album. One finds joy in the absurdities of sharing a life with somebody, another gives itself over to romance, while ‘Guts’ shows just how openly Ogden is now prepared to write about love.

By the time ‘The Deep End’ closes the record with those familiar Blossoms harmonies swelling around it, several stages of their career seem to have met in the same place. 

‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ is not about pretending that growing older is glamorous. It is about recognising that love, responsibility, humour and routine can provide their own kind of excitement.

Blossoms have grown up without growing boring.