© Sanja Marusic
On a cold and windy night in Luxembourg City, dutch indie outfit Pip Blom brought a warm, fuzzy feeling
Sub-zero November weather had suddenly hit, and the capital felt like a ghost town before Pip Blom were due on stage. But whatever complaints there might have been regarding the snow, the cold, or the wind, we were quickly warmed up by vibrant and boisterous session at De Gudde Wëllen's cosy second-floor space.
The three-piece have in the past toured with some quite serious rock bands like The Breeders, Garbage, and Franz Ferdinand, although they themselves always maintain a slightly playful edge.
Fronted by the eponymous Pip Blom, the band also features Tender Blom and Darek Mercks - a tight group with a tight sound.
A tight-knit feel is certainly detectable in the band's overall sound. Buried beneath crashing indie-rock riffs hide quite sincere sentiments as vocalised by Pip's tenderly cool singing style. If anything, the overall feel of their earlier work balances serious rock-band business with a softened edge, combining sweet singing notes with killer riffs.
The band's current sound, leaning more towards the electronic, doesn't deviate from this essential, intoxicating formula. Their latest EP, Grip, dabbles in dance, dream pop and chip-tune-esque noises, but doesn't stray too far from what makes the band unique.
Indeed, each song on the EP is quite different from anything they'd made previously and are all quite different from each other. You get the sense that they're seriously playing around with new sonic profiles, as if every track were a little self-contained experiment.
Their new approach was on full display at Gudde Wëllen. We'd barely made it to the second-floor stage before Tender Bloom started gesticulating wildly, juggling instruments, drinks, and a massive mixing board that looked like it was about to tip over and off the stage at any moment. Imagine the headline: local indie boy crushed to death by Pip Blom's portable mixing board – friends slightly jealous.
Whilst their 2025 EP Grip sounds quite electro-heavy, their live show was a pitch-perfect mix of prefab beats and live riff-playing. Indeed, it reminded some of us of the British band Getdown Services, who make up for a lack of a drummer with excellent use of a mixing board (often to comedic effect).
I got the chance to ask them about it after the show, to which they simply replied that whilst it can be limiting, "there's enough playroom for us to experiment with different songs, and to make them sound a little bit newer." I would've asked them more questions, but I was holding up the merch line. Bad look.
It was a warm, fuzzy feeling to watch the trio present their fresh sound to an intimate crowd at De Gudde Wëllen. In a particularly poignant moment, Tender thanked the crowd for showing support for local bands and local venues. And whilst Pip Blom aren't local per se, they certainly feel like your local indie rock outfit whose best shows are played on wintry nights at small venues in sparsely populated countries.
