Summer boogie with Blossoms
July 13th, 2009 by Flint
Hosting a summer party? Need something to play on the car during the hot, sunny days? Feel like just randomly shaking your ass to the groove in your bedroom when your significant other hasn’t yet got to share a summer vacation with you? Then look no further than Finland, or if you prefer it this post. Blossoms are here for you.
Blossoms are a band from Finland who believe in the power of love, boogie and sunshine. Their music is an infectious mixture of sunshiney pop, dance-enducing disco and sexually funkaliciously grooved out rock n roll. And of course, a whole bunch of good feeling: it’s all about fun! Funky bass throbs along a steady drum beat and a guitar groove, keyboards spicing up life here and there as frontman Aki sings about love and partying with his seductively macho and charismatic voice, with wonderful female backing vocals offering a gentle support at strategic moments. Sometimes the music gets slower (though not often), sometimes you get real rockers such as the hi-energy “Get Laid” (guess the subject matter!). While their output so far has been quite small – one EP, one single and one album – what they’ve let out is essential for your summer.
The band started their career with a self-titled EP, offering four songs of such magnitude that when this little blogger heard the samples and found out that his local music store is one of the few places that stocked the EP, he was off in an instant. “One Night” chugs on with its addicting funky poppiness and guest female dueting, rolling so deliciously that you’d never guess it was the band’s first recording. With its fantastic chorus and general feel-good greatness, it stands as the band’s greatest moment so far. Well, tied with “Beach” which ends the album. Beach could also be considered the band’s most serious song, starting with a gentle peaceful pace and declarations of romance to an epic crasher ending rocker of a beast with the repeated line “we’re all gonna go someday/don’t you know that”, at the same time celebrating life and defying the short time we all get with it. The two other songs of the EP complement the two highlights well, even if never threatening to dethrone them. And because the EP is pretty much unavailable anymore, check the end of the post for a mp3 grab of the whole thing!
The main Blossoms offering however is the also self-titled album released in 2006. One Night and Beach have been transferred from the EP and both have gained slight updates, beefed up, taken even further and hitting with even greater grooves, effectively creating the definitive versions of both songs. The aforementioned Get Laid storms with a primal lust through its hilariously energetic rocking three minutes, “Love Me for a While” is the centrepiece disco epic, “Sonando de la Luz” takes a mediterranean tinge and actually manages to pull it off, while “Celebration” is moreso a Blossoms version of Andrew W.K.’s “Party Hard” rather than the Kool and the Gang song of the same name. While the album might seem terribly brief, clocking only at 32 minutes, it’s the exactly perfect length for a non-stop summery party groove.
Blossoms themselves seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth, with what their official website having been down for over a year now. This is a bit of a bugger, not only in general but because one of their very best songs – an 80’s tributing synth-funk thing – never got a studio recording. I had the chance to see the band live once and while I’m not usually the sort of person to go wow over live acts, that performance made me a Blossoms fanboy for a while. I’ve calmed down slightly now but when you get down to the suave dance moves of their music, you’ll understand the feeling.
Download Blossoms EP
MP3: Get Laid
MP3: Love Me for a While
Buy the Blossoms album from Record Shop X
