High Bloom is the new ambient pop project from Caroline White (Infinity Crush, Julia Brown) and her roommate Hans Hoffman (White Wreath). Naturally, being roommates and all, they’re both based out of Maryland, and they seem like the type of people who would get on well coexisting together in the same space, comfortably alone. Haloed, their first release, is insular and illusory — White’s light-as-air voice floats above cushiony, muted beats, providing an appropriately chilly backdrop for her sentiments of apparitional love.
“I lose myself in all the ways I want you/ I’d come back here just to haunt you,” she sings on the title track. On the tender “Sweat,” she intimates: “I want you suddenly, like I don’t know what I need/ And I love you ’til I can’t breathe and light makes me dizzy.” Just like the best of her solo work, White scratches at a yearning that is both all-encompassing and all-too-fleeting: “I didn’t want love,” she admits in a self-serving moment on “Wallpaper.” “I just wanted a kiss, so I kiss and I kiss and feel myself exist.” Amidst stuttering starts and atmospheric structures, High Bloom is music that begs you to get lost in it — my favorites are “Protect Me” and “Seeing You,” but they all kind of blend together in the smudgy, comforting way that this sort of ambience should.
- James Rettig, Stereogum
Follow High Bloom on Bandcamp