Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) out April 18, 2025

“A well-crafted blend of post-punk and dream-pop with atmospheric guitars and synths, driving rhythms, ethereal vocals, hypnotic song hooks and lyrics of grief, love and loss.” – KEXP (on Horizons)

Fotoform’s third album, Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom), explores loss and grief through shoegaze-inflected post-punk with poetically disarming honesty and vulnerability. The Seattle band have refined their crystalline sound into a warm gauze of beauty, sadness, and drive on their new album.

Kim House (vocals, bass, synths, guitar) and Geoff Cox (guitars) create an intimate and profoundly personal work, highlighting themes of loss, pain, resilience, and transformation. Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) dives deep into existential questions – at turns, cathartic, graceful, and propulsive – all the while unflinching and direct. Kim House’s lyrics continue to surprise and disarm, while the music shimmers, swirls, and shudders.

Written following a series of catastrophic life events, Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) explores the struggles that come with grief and loss. The album was created in the wake of radical, unexpected upheaval and change, deaths in the immediate family, and while navigating incurable chronic pain. Working through grief, trauma, and the onset of a life-altering neurological condition informed the album from the start. “We have to rupture to heal… the journey is long and fraught with mistakes” (“Skimming the Surface”). The record distills coping with grief (in all its various forms) while facing fear and debilitating anguish – mental and physical – head on. The album articulates this resilience in the face of invisible pain, and the refusal to be defined by the challenges we all face, in whatever form.

While Fotoform’s previous album, Horizons, was “a primal scream from within the dark night of the soul” (Post-Punk.com), Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom) embraces acceptance and healing, letting in the light and a new way forward. The arc of the album moves from trauma and upheaval to reflection and understanding, and eventually to acceptance, stability, and peace.

With Grief is a Garden (Forever in Bloom), the band layers melodic, chorused bass, washy guitars, haunting synths, and plaintive vocals. Kim House and Geoff Cox, once again joined by Michael Schorr (ex-Death Cab for Cutie) on drums, dig deep, mining lustrous veins of darkwave and post-punk ore, drawing on the textures and sound-worlds of the aqua-netted, chemical-fogged ‘80s, while adding in more acoustic and synth elements to recall the half-lidded daydreams of post-goth.

The three singles for the album explore how we navigate transformation, change, and loss, peeling back the layers to get to what is important. “If You Knew / Don’t You Worry, Baby” reflects on the fleeting nature of life and asks the profound question: If we knew our time was limited, how would we live differently? It also seeks to comfort and soothe as we navigate living with uncertainty and the unknowable. “Grief is a Garden,” the title track, reflects on the enduring, ever-evolving nature of grief and how it changes over time. It blooms, decays, and nourishes itself, embodying love, beauty, pain, and transformation. As we move through life, we accumulate grief, and the 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 after loss. “This City is Over” strives to break free of the grind of corporate America and the hollow spaces it creates. It’s a call to recenter, shift perspective, get in touch with our values and priorities, and “follow the truth inside your soul.”

The couple first met in Seattle’s buzzing indie scene when Kim was in design school and Geoff worked mail order at Sub Pop and Up! Records. They didn’t play together in a band until the goth-gaze C’est la Mort, after they returned from living abroad in Germany, as Geoff was earning his PhD in German Literature. Kim went on to a meteoric career in fashion, trend forecasting, and design, before recently pivoting to more purpose-driven work in coaching creatives. The two have been the constant through various lineups in Fotoform (and its previous incarnation as C’est la Mort).

 

“Fotoform’s exquisite ‘If You Knew / Don’t You Worry, Baby’ steps into the fragile space between uncertainty and acceptance, where time is short and questions linger too long. It is a conversation whispered into the void—what would you do if the clock ran out?... ‘If You Knew / Don’t You Worry, Baby’ drifts between sorrow and light, reaching for something beyond the veil.”– Post-punk.com

“Fotoform is not just a band; it is an emotional experience. Their music invites us to confront our own uncertainties but also offers us a refuge in which we can find solace and hope. In an increasingly chaotic world, their message is more necessary than ever.” ­­– Soulwavez

“In short, Fotoform is a band that not only offers a captivating sound, but also a deep emotional experience. Their music is a reminder that, even in the midst of uncertainty, there is always room for hope and love.” – Playlist Magazine