Blossoms' Tom Ogden speaks ahead of Birmingham gig

A number one album, Brit Award nomination and sell-out hometown gig at Castlefield Bowl in Manchester penned for the summer are among the highlights.

Tonight, the indie five-piece will return to Birmingham, a little over six months after they brought their tunes to The Institute in Digbeth.

This time, they're heading to the second city as part of the prestigious NME Awards Tour - and they'll once again be joined by close friends Cabbage as well as 17-year-old fellow Stockport lad Rory Wynne.

Ahead of the show, we caught up with frontman Tom Ogden, who is looking forward to bringing the show to Brum after trips to London, Lincoln, Liverpool and more.

Tonight the boys are set to play the likes of Charlemagne, Honeysweet and My Favourite Room in front of a youthful crowd at the Academy.

While Cabbage and Rory Wynne will be songs off their album Young Dumb and Full Of... and What Would Rory Wynne Do? EP respectively.

Mr Ogden is a big fan of both and believes there's a lot of good stuff to get excited about at the moment.

"Yeah I think Cabbage are great, he said. "They're just a quality new band. We get on well with them and it helps when you're on tour and all mates.

"Rory Wynne is a young lad from Stockport and he's great as well.

"There's a band called from Liverpool called The Vryll Society who we've been championing a lot too. The Magic Gang from Brighton are cool and Sundara Karma are really good as well."

According to Tom, Blossoms are quite the connoisseurs of Italian food.

And whilst on tour, he and his band mates are on the lookout for the best bolognese out there - that's if the temptation of a pasty from Greggs doesn't stop them on the way.

"We're on the search for the best bolognese in the world. We get a tagliatelle everywhere we go in order to find the best.

"Bologna was the best so far but Hull had a good one to be fair.

"I do f**cking love Greggs. They messaged me on Twitter after the Brit awards and said wherever I was they'd deliver me anything I wanted.

"I didn't follow through with the offer but I'm going to have to take them up on it.

"It's all about the sausage,beans and cheese Melt, but depends what time of the day it is. I like a meat and potato pasty as well."

Blossoms missed out on a the British Breakthrough Act at the Brits in February to Ran'n'Bone Man.

But it wasn't too bad for Tom, Charlie, Josh, Joe and Myles, who spent the evening sat next to Katy Perry.

The band played more than an impressive 150 shows together in 2016.

"We went to Leeds Festival in 2012 and saw the The Cure and Black Keys and stuff so from memories it will be great to get there. It is mad to think we'll be playing on main stage. Its surreal.

"Looking forward to Benicassim, Me, Joe and Charlie went there just before we started in 2013 and we thought imagine coming back and now we're playing the main stage."

The NME Awards Tour featuring Blossoms, Cabbage and Rory Wynne comes to the O2 Academy tonight.

For tickets call 0121 622 8250 or go to academymusicgroup.com/o2academybirmingham.

By Tom Oakley