* En anglais uniquement
The daughter of oboist Robert Bloom,
Kath Bloom is an American singer/songwriter comparable to
Vashti Bunyan. She grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where she studied the cello as a child and started playing the guitar when she was a teenager.
Bloom collaborated with Bruce Neumann in the early '70s, but it wasn't until she met avant-garde guitarist
Loren MazzaCane Connors in 1976 that she started recording.
Bloom and
Connors recorded five albums of fragile, simple folk and blues melodies, the majority of which were written by
Bloom herself. Their collaboration ended in 1984 with the release of their final album, Moonlight, of which only 300 copies were pressed.
Bloom stopped recording new material soon after her collaboration with
Connors ended, and a period of financial hardship followed. A single mother,
Bloom focused on raising her children, rarely playing shows outside of New Haven. Director Richard Linklater discovered
Bloom's music sometime in the early '90s and subsequently featured her song "Come Here" in his 1995 film, Before Sunrise. Encouraged by Linklater's interest in her music,
Bloom started writing new songs and released her first album in over ten years, Come Here: The Florida Years, in 1999. The album was followed up with 1981-1984, a re-release of songs she had recorded with
Connors just before they split up. This was followed by Sing the Children Over in 2001, Kath Bloom and Loren MazzaCane Connors in 2002, and the retrospective collection
Finally on Chapter Music in 2005.
In 2008,
Bloom issued
Terror, which was recorded solo and with backing from her Love at Work Band. Chapter followed this in 2009 with a tribute album called Loving Takes This Course: A Tribute to the Songs of Kath Bloom. It featured covers of
Bloom's songs from contributors who included
Marble Sounds,
Bill Callahan,
Laura Jean,
Mark Kozelek,
Mick Turner & Peggy Frew,
Devendra Banhart,
Scout Niblett,
the Dodos,
Josephine Foster,
Mia Doi Todd, Corinna Repp,
Marianne Dissard & Joey Burns,
Amy Rude, and
Meg Baird & the Concretes.
Bloom signed with
Kozelek's Caldo Verde label for 2010's
Thin Thin Line.
In typical fashion,
Bloom played occasional shows, but otherwise remained silent for another two years. In 2012, Here I Am, a five-track digital EP, was issued by Caldo Verde. Though she appeared on
Pink City by
Jennifer Castle and
This Frontier Needs Heroes'
The Future,
Bloom focused on writing for the next two years. In 2014 she went to record in California for the first time. She emerged with the album
Pass Through Here, which was issued by Chapter Music in early 2015. Recorded over five Los Angeles winters,
Bloom's 19th full-length outing, 2017's This Dream of Life, included guest spots from
Avi Buffalo,
Imaad Wasif, and
Mark Kozelek. ~ Thom Jurek