As if losing one brother wasn’t enough, Fotoform’s Kim House lost another this past February. Both deaths were sudden and unexpected, making the title track to the Seattle-based neo-shoegaze trio’s upcoming LP all the more wrenchingly relevant.
“My brother Jeff passed away right after we released our first single,” says House. “I’m still trying to absorb the devastating reality that he’s gone … just as we’re starting to release songs off an album centered around grief, loss, resilience and healing.”
A starkly personal piece of work with a more varied stylistic scope than 2021’s heavier Horizons, Grief Is Garden (Forever In Bloom) is set for release April 18 on Dismal Nitch. For their third release, House and guitarist Geoffrey Cox brought back former Death Cab For Cutie drummer Michael Schorr while hashing out a more nuanced sound that cemented their kinship with classic 4AD acts like This Mortal Coil, Pale Saints and Lush.
The title track is marked by a pronounced longing for answers to life’s nagging questions. “I’ve wrestled with existential doubts since childhood, questioning everything from the stories I was raised with to the mysteries of life and death itself,” says House. “As we move through life, we accumulate grief. This song contemplates the evolving nature of our relationship to loss and love, as grief becomes a part of us, forever changing us and informing our new selves as we continue with life.”
We’re proud to premiere Fotoform’s “Grief Is A Garden.”
—Hobart Rowland
See Fotoform live.
