Blossoms – Norwich UEA Nick Ryans LCR – 27/02/17
Blossoms (8) follow up their 2016 sell out tour with another amazing performance. Although the venue was not sold out, the atmosphere was buzzing from the moment the first support act, Rory Wynne, stepped onto the stage. The second support, Cabbage, really got the crowd going, setting the dancefloor alight with hits such as Terrorist Synthesizer and Dinner Lady.
When the stage was set and lights went down, the crowd lit up. An instrumental intro of Kanye West’s Black Skinhead blasted out of the speakers and Blossoms entered the stage. They opened with At Most A Kiss blended into Texia, followed by Blow, with the crowd singing back the chorus to the outstretched mic. It was clear from their first few songs that the band were enjoying themselves and looked completely comfortable on the stage, making it their own.
After some highlights from their debut album and some B-sides, the main part of the set was ended with My Favourite Room sung and played only by the front man, Tom Ogden. Before he started, he asked the audience if there was anyone who had recently been dumped, and picked out a girl named Lizzy from the audience. The crowd were howling with laughter when he squeezed her name and Ryan’s (the ex) into the song, making a good gig into a great performance. A rather surreal moment happened at the end of that song. He sung a line of Half The World Away and the crowd continued the chorus. That was then followed by Last Christmas and Tom and the audience sang back the entire song. In February.
He left the stage and, as usual, chants of ‘we want more’ were echoing around the room. They came back out and with the familiar chords of Cut Me And I’ll Bleed, the crowd were back, dancing and singing. Their time was almost up and there was one obvious song missing from the set, the first song of their album, Charlemagne.
This was a gig that was made thoroughly enjoyable by the band not only playing great music, but they were not too busy being pretentious or ‘different’, to show that they were having as good of a time on stage as their fans were having in front of it.
Review: Chris Brough
