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Virtual Heaven

by Infinity Crush

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josiah.
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josiah. young forbidden love, touching secret touches in the backseat, kissing when you think people won't see, embarrassed by the flush all over your cheeks, and how matter how hard you tried, you couldn't stop the eventuality of how you came together Favorite track: misbehaving.
estherrae
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estherrae this whole album is so beautiful and soft <3 Favorite track: mirror.
Ben Harris
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Ben Harris This is gorgeous, and deeply palpably sad. Don't let the shortness of the songs fool you into thinking this is an album of half-finished thoughts. Each one is a deliciously bittersweet contribution to a box of artfully melancholy chocolates. An impressively composed and substantial record, despite the deceptive lightness of the music. Favorite track: lunar pull.
Dakota Sillyman
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Dakota Sillyman One of this years best albums! Beautiful, mature songwriting backed up by lovely production. Favorite track: misbehaving.
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1.
misbehaving 02:36
spin me 'round forever baby endless summer misbehaving I wanna be good but you make me crazy touching my thigh in the backseat baby remember last december with me? the snow fell down like love around me and I wanna be cool like 'oh, you do't phase me' but I sit in my room thinking about you baby living in a daydream with you hazy nights that make me want you you know I'd drive out west to see you sun in my eyes, going fast to meet you the oak trees and the lights and the way you lose your mind when you're watching me undress and you say that I'm the best out of all the girls that come and waste your time but you go and waste theirs too 'cause that's just what you do you evil little thing, you're so pretty in the light my body's resurrected every time it's in your sight sleeping like an angel on the drive to california and you don't know what you do but you do it and you do it and you do it don't you? I want eternal twilight in your quiet little room and I don't know what I do but I'm falling and I'm falling and I'm falling into you
2.
haze 01:56
I don't care what people say, I know you've made a few mistakes but you're so good inside your room watching me just watching you you fold your clothes, the end is soon it's almost fall, it's almost noon the world expand and we do too we move apart then I'm back to you and I'm falling like snow and you're pulling me down and I can't help from laughing when I hit the ground the way the light hits your face, it makes me religious 'cause when we're alone swear I feel something with us somewhere there's a world where we can be together fully: the sun just sets eternally, the sky all pink and holy and maybe we live by the lake, swimming in the summer haze and I'm falling like rain and you're pulling me down
3.
drive thru 01:38
i meet you in the drive thru and you're staring at my hands and it's pretty cold for april fourth but it's not feeling so bad i want it all, the sweet control, like when I'm driving off the road and only I know where I go and then you like when I'm on top and you just sit and you just watch and then it's like I'm in a painting when I come and get you off you can still get into heaven baby if you just do it soft I want it all, the sweet evil, and this place is not my home, I just sleep and I just grow into something else and someone else and move the way I know and I'm not whole
4.
car 02:22
you're sitting in your room and the world spins around you do you feel me where you are? do you think of me at all? and all we have is time, I grow with you for a while then you run ahead of me and I'm left pretending I love the way you stare at my body like a car crashing back into the earth do you know the way this hurts? you know my name and you know my body and it feels like heaven when you just watch me you know I think of you in everything I do just tell me the truth, you can just tell me the truth feels the first time snow has hit the ground the stillness that you bring every time you come around heaven hurts and heaven stings and heaven feels like nothing I get too high, I sleep it off, I wake up the rain pure and soft it's like a song I never learned, your face so pure the way it burns I only have my little words, powerless against the hurt
5.
lunar pull 01:38
your lunar pull gives me vertigo and I'm spending the night for the one thousandth time you give me head 'cause we are just friends and that's what we do, but I don't love you remember the fire that burned near your house in the quiet november we don't make a sound and I think that I'm done with your shit but I kind of love it I want to tell you about what I read, how flowers at night bloom 'cause they're tired but I can't speak when you look at me so I buy some perfume to smell like the moon and I'm tired but I'm not blooming and I want you but I'm not moving and you made me feel holy, but only this morning
6.
minnesota 02:12
in minnesota it's raining quiet like a dream and the birds all fly south like a halo over me I could stay here forever with you just watching me you're like water the way that you bleed through everything come pick me up, come take me down we can just drive around, we can just kiss on the mouth come touch my hair, come let me stare I just want to watch you move like a light across the room you have this quiet force about you, there's physics to just wanting you I'm in your snowglobe for a moment you shake me up and watch me move and it's just like me to chase something I know that I can never have but it's nice to think about your figure just standing in the tall grass and I'm staying up all night again, I'm sitting on the roof hoping that the wind that touches me might touch you too you know I'm living through these days and I'm just looking for relief waiting for a second where I don't feel anything and I guess winter's always coming, or it's just about to leave we're happy for a moment, and then we blink
7.
when the world ends, I hope I'm just in your bed and you look at me again, and it feels like heaven redemption can be sweet when you're on earth with me I want move without direction, back to you no hesitation I'm haunted by this dream I have where you kiss my neck and then my hands and we're lying in the brightest garden the world is pure and we are golden
8.
pink moon 02:12
wake up from the dream where you kiss me when you're sober I see you in the light, then I blink and then it's over wasn't life so pretty when I'd meet you in the garden? you'd say my name forever like it was a song you know, the sunset's not so pretty when you look straight at the light I never learn my lesson, I always burn my eyes drive into the street like it's any other thursday I almost see your face as I merge onto the highway I think of you forever like a long expanding field you take up so much space in every way I feel you know, the world is always spinning and we're just here for the ride I hope that through earth's movements we finally collide my body's like a wave, always moving towards you you look at me that way and I know that I can't have you but wasn't life so pretty when you'd meet me in the water? you'd say a little prayer before ever going under you know I'd stand and wait for you to come and swim up I'd wait and wait forever but I guess that wasn't enough
9.
mirror 02:14
love the way you stare in the mirror when I'm there and you tell me you don't care about me I'm stuck inside the dream where you want me and you tell me that I am free like the birds that fly above the whole world and don't know love and I am far from everything that's ever touched me perform my rituals right before I sleep so I can have the dream where you want me and somehow in the dark I have lost my shape and I just want you to take me home to the place where I am free, the mountains inside my dreams I never asked for anything, some love some safety do you love what you've done like a sickness in the dark that comes and distorts everything I thought? but I am beautiful without you, I am learning life without you I am beautiful without you, I'm so beautiful
10.
green 02:17
in my fantasy it's all green and you're here with me I'm not real, I am free I take my clothes off when it gets too warm and I can't breathe when you look at me we don't have to do a thing, just lie here with me I try not to see you when I close my eyes, but it's like water on the ground, uncontained disperse around you know I still love you like the way the snow falls down it's so soft but so destructive, its beauty counterproductive I keep finding myself back inside your room I really thought that I could change, I really thought it'd be the same but you're looking at me different you want the person, I'm the picture of who I was, of who you loved it's not enough
11.
I am free like the bird in the ashes that flies through to see you and loves you and needs you I re-wear my clothes and I don't wash my hair like if everything stays still then you will still be here I want to come over in the middle of the night and you comfort me and you come for me I want something so pure and green that I'm not crazy and you still want me I am warm like the sun in the winter that feels far but loves you and lives to dream of you I want to come over in the middle of the day and it's all okay and it's all the same I have the dream with all my friends, the world just stops and then it ends and I love you through it all I wake up, the snow falls
12.
nothing 02:14
hey baby you can change your name but you can't change what you did to me like I am nothing standing still in the snow just to be alone getting high in the dark to forget who you are I don't know my body anymore, do you? I don't know my body anymore, what did you do? 'don't act out, close your mouth, be a good girl for me now, you're so sweet when you say nothing' I go outside, I close my eyes, I want to be swallowed in light, I never am, I go inside, I think of you all night hey baby you can change your mind but you can't change what you are when it's you all alone, lying in the dark you don't own my body anymore, do you? you don't own my body anymore, what did you do to me? I was fine, I was good, always did what I should look at me, look at this, how I move just to exist, I'm so high I can't breath, hold me down, laugh at me say I am just nothing, until I am just nothing
13.
prophet 03:00
I get in my car and I just drive to where you are and it's like heaven isn't far, it's just a few miles away and it's just starting to rain I drift in and out of the room where you live like I'm a dream that's traveling and I come to you like a prophet any time you want it I want to die next to you while I'm saying something boring I want to die next to you and do it every morning my body's running out of time so I just let my hair down and look at you that way you like and try to keep my food down this life is small and full of pain but you could make me dinner screaming through the summer rain we wake up all your neighbors it's always been you that I want to run to just leave on a light and I will come home soon I know you don't like a lot of things about me but if you close your eyes then you can just feel me baby, please

about

On first listen, Infinity Crush’s Virtual Heaven is a bit like entering another world. The album’s sonic beauty and the stunning vocals of songwriter Caroline White are transportive: Virtual Heaven can be heightened and surreal, but also intensely down to earth and human; it can be stark and minimal, but also lush and stirring; it can be unabashedly romantic, but also painfully complex; it rarely offers resolution, but it’s incredibly gratifying. The more you explore this new world, the more you realize that White’s words and melodies aren’t just escapism, but instead reflections of life’s beauty, contradiction, hurt, and joy--internal and external moments and feelings that are very real even if we don’t always have the language to fully express them.

The beginnings of Infinity Crush saw White releasing a prolific stream of home recordings as she became a part of a community of like-minded musicians that includes Sam Ray, Alex G, and Elvis Depressedly. This culminated in 2016’s Warmth Equation, a document of her ability to deftly apply the homespun charm of Infinity Crush’s early work to a more fully-realized album format for the first time. After moving from Maryland to North Carolina to study poetry, White found herself alone in a new city for the first time and spent most of her days reading, writing, and working on the music that would become Virtual Heaven. The more isolated she felt, the more potent her interior world became. White explains, “I found myself fantasizing and romanticizing, which is easy to do when you’re by yourself all the time. Every interaction would feel sort of high stakes in a way that was kind of silly and not rational, but I’d also sort of let myself enjoy it.”

This daydream-like blur of fantasy and reality would become a hallmark of Virtual Heaven, and pairs perfectly with White’s fascination with language itself. “I feel really drawn to language that makes you rethink or reframe the words themselves,” she says. “You can know language so well but it can still surprise you and move you. You can think of it as our material existence because it’s how we understand the world, but no matter what you say, you can never get to an exact meaning. That’s a horrible hang-up but there’s also something really beautiful about all that space in between meanings.” That space is where Virtual Heaven came to life.

Infinity Crush often has a rotating cast of collaborators and for Virtual Heaven, White teamed with her close friend Jordan Bleau to record at Minneapolis’ Minnehaha Studios. It was the first time she made a record in a real studio, and despite the exhausting process of flying back and forth and lengthy overnight sessions, she calls it “the most fulfilled I’ve ever felt after making an album. It was pretty emotional for me to have the resources to really create the best thing I could make.” The result is Infinity Crush’s most fleshed out work to date, yet Virtual Heaven still maintains the intimacy of the project’s early recordings. Each song is a self-contained vignette that rarely uses conventional structures or reaches the three minute mark, while always tightly threaded with hyper-specific snapshots, hazy allusions, and rich instrumentation.

“Misbehaving” opens Virtual Heaven with plaintive guitar and White’s gentle voice dancing over many of the album’s recurring motifs: romanticized interactions, conflicted morality, and the little details that at once ground and heighten the surreal elements. “Haze” leans into the excitement of submitting to fantasy, while songs like “Drive Thru,” “Car,” or “Lunar Pull” find White allowing herself to show her sense of humor or indulge in a touch of drama with greater ease. On the title track and “Through The Ashes,” she touches on some of the unexpectedly apocalyptic imagery on Virtual Heaven. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it but I think those themes are going to seep in for most people making music right now. Just genuine existential dread for a lot of what this generation is told we’re going to experience.”

Throughout Virtual Heaven, White weaves her guitar and voice through shimmering keyboards, distant drums, and harmonies with Bleau, which all work to envelope the listener in the album’s otherworldly atmosphere. The dreamlike music and lyrics are so inextricable and absorbing that album-closer “Prophet” inadvertently acts as a gut-wrenching reality-check. “It might be the most ‘realistic’ song on the record,” White says. “The end is just being vulnerable, and how even after all the fantasies you’re still going to have to come back to reality and deal with what’s happening. Everything isn’t perfect.” This is the power of Virtual Heaven: it’s not another world and it doesn’t have easy answers, but it’s life and all of the beauty and heartache that comes with it.

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released August 9, 2019

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Infinity Crush Greensboro, North Carolina

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