ON THE RISE
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With his new track, “Dreaming,” Jeryko’s melody lifts your head to the clouds while the beat keeps your feet tapping on solid ground.
When told this, he said, “Exactly! That’s the point — you’ve got to bring both your head and your feet into it if you want to achieve your dreams.”
The mix of slow acoustic guitar and background strings opens the way. Jeryko softens his baritone voice as he starts with the chorus:
Dreaming heads up in the clouds
I’m just dreaming they tell me to come down
All they know is what they tell themselves
But I’m still dreaming in the clouds
About 40 seconds in, the music stops, Jeryko sings the hook:
Not coming down
And the beat kicks in, emphasizing the point. “Not coming down.”
“It’s about being someone who’s a dreamer, who believes in big things, for myself and for the people that I love,” he said.
“I think the people that have an impact are the dreamers. We have these visions of what we can accomplish, and the people accomplishing them — the craziest people do it. You know?”
Jeryko describes his music as “soulful indie pop.” The indie and the pop are definitely there. The soulful is not “soulful” in the usual way of somebody singing in some breathy, ethereal voice. It is soul — Jeryko’s — set to a rocking beat, solid melody and catchy lyrics.
His music comes from what he describes as three points of a triangle. One he calls alt-rock, inspired by artists such as The Fray, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Fall Out Boy. Another he calls “alt neo-soul” (Mac Miller, Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, Tash Sultana, Jon Bellion).
The third is “ancient melodies” from his Neo-Hasidic Jewish faith and heritage.
Whatever he calls it, however he describes it, he uses the three ingredients to create music, which often has a beauty that words can’t really comprehend, being in the nature of dreams.
“When you dream,” he said, “it’s not just about dreaming, it’s about bringing it into action, bringing it into the world, and that takes grit. That takes hard work, a lot of work.”
He relates it to his music this way: “True dreaming is like this mix of ethereal, high-level, warm, fuzzy sounds that make you think you’re looking out a window on a road trip, and then we bring it back down to earth with the beats.”
“Dreaming” is the second single he has put out that will be part of a long-term project to create an album. The first was “Walk Away,” released earlier this year.
Going forward, the plan is to drop a single a month until the as-yet unnamed album takes final shape.
“‘Dreaming,’” he said, the song, “encapsulates a lot of what the album is about. It’s about being someone who’s a dreamer, who believes in big things for myself and for the people I love.”
A lot of talk about dreams, dreamers and dreaming is based on the perception of “dream” as something that, however sweet, will never be real. Jeryko — a name from the Bible, an ancient Jew who prayed and saw himself breaking down walls, making the unattainable real — connects earth and sky.
Perhaps that’s the role the soul plays.
“Part of it is that we have to have good intentions with our dreams, too — pure hearts and the desire to bring light into the world, to bring people joy, because there’s also a lot of dreamers that are trying to do the opposite.”
This soul thing, this dreaming, this business of good intentions — it sounds nice, but if you’re the kind that doesn’t give a rip about this stuff, you can ignore it and still experience the beauty of the music and the enjoyment in listening to his songs.
He is, after all, in the business of music, which he has been putting out since 2017. His songs have attracted millions of streams across various platforms.
Still, he says that his music career “started out pretty slow.”
“It was kind of a side thing for me. I would just put out one or two songs a year.”
He was always playing, first in places like yoga studios, then his first solo show in the Mercury Lounge. A fan base started growing. He put out an EP in 2020, the six-track Human, and things started picking up.
Since, he has played to sold-out audiences in big New York venues, Gramercy Theater and Music Hall of Williamsburg.
“The next stop is Webster Hall, hopefully.”
For him personally, he said, creating songs is like prayer. He does not put that on other people.
“I use music in my own life for my own spiritual pursuits to connect to something bigger. I like to say that, like at a show, my goal is to help people connect to each other, to connect to themselves and to something bigger, to whatever version of God that is for you.”
If, for some people, the something bigger is, say, “only” music, then it is still well worth connecting to Jeryko on all platforms for new music, videos, and social posts.
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ON THE RISE
Blossoms caught up with NME to discuss competing with The Beatles and Johnny Marr for this week’s Number One album. With ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ in the running, the band also explained why making things themselves remains such an important part of their work as AI becomes more common.
The Stockport group put out their sixth album last Friday, October 2. By the midweek update, it was sitting at Number Two, between The Beatles’ expanded edition of ‘Rubber Soul’ and Johnny Marr’s latest solo album, ‘The Age Of Everything’.
“It’s mad, to be honest,” singer Tom Ogden said to NME about the chart race. “Liverpool on one side, Manchester on the other and Stockport in the middle. If you’d told us this 10 years ago, when we were releasing our debut, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I mean, we’re in good company aren’t we?”
Discussing the stories behind the album, Ogden described ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ as “about being married and all the everyday stuff that comes with it”. He married Katie Donovan, the sister of Blossoms drummer Joe, in 2021. Married life has since given him a new appreciation for what he describes as “the extraordinary ordinary”.
“Saying the wrong thing in an argument, losing your wife’s no claims bonus, crying at the Kardashians, it’s all in there,” he explained. “The album is named after Stockport Town Hall, which everyone round where we live calls the Wedding Cake, and it’s where I got married, so it couldn’t be much closer to home.
“The last album [‘Gary’, 2024] had a song about a stolen fibreglass gorilla, which everyone loved, and that gave us the confidence to bring the same playfulness to this one, just with more personal subject matter this time.”
Alongside tracks that came out of writing sessions with Declan McKenna in a hot tub, the album reflects the band’s desire to stay involved in every part of the creative process.
“It started with the recording,” Ogden explained. “We made the album with Shawn Lee, playing live straight to tape, and once you’ve done it that way you can’t really go and fake everything else. We sat down as a band and picked the colour palette, and everything visual followed from that. We had body scans taken of ourselves and cake toppers of the five of us 3D printed, put them on a real cake and photographed it. I’ve directed and edited the videos, and the sets are all built by hand, no green screen. For the pop-up shop on launch weekend, a local artist hand-painted the album cover for the sign outside.
“It’s more work, but you end up with a world that’s yours, and I think people can tell when a band’s had its hands on everything.”
With AI tools and digital effects becoming increasingly widespread, that approach feels particularly relevant. For Blossoms, though, the motivation is simple: “the fun is in the making”.
“Tape doesn’t let you cheat and neither does a real cake,” Ogden said. “If a set’s a bit wonky, it’s because one of us or our mates built it. I think the more stuff gets generated, the more people want to know a human being actually did it. We’ve been in this band together for over 10 years, five lads from Stockport, and that isn’t something you can ‘prompt’.”
Maya Jama also appeared in the video for the album’s first single, ‘Meet Me In Love’. Her appearance came shortly before the UK launch of Celebrity Traitors, where she took on the role of a traitor alongside a cast that included Richard E Grant and James Acaster.
“She was brilliant,” Ogden recalled of working with Jama. “We’d met her at the MTV EMAs in Manchester a couple of years ago, so we took a chance and sent her a DM …and she said yes. Next thing she’s in a theatre in Cheadle miming my vocals while a load of people dressed as me serenade her. She got the idea straight away and was a proper laugh about it.”
The conversation then turned to whether he thought Jama could take home the win on Celebrity Traitors.
Ogden joked: “As for Traitors, she spent a whole day pretending to sing my song and I almost believed her, so I’d say she’s got every chance.”
Fans can listen to ‘Songs From The Wedding Cake’ now. In November, Blossoms head out on a UK arena tour with The Royston Club. Tickets and further details are available here.
Before the tour begins, the group is also scheduled to appear on SNL UK on Saturday, October 24.
