Liz Harris, alias Grouper. The Portland based singer-songwriter has been around for awhile. 2008's "Dragging a Dead Dear Up a Hill", the most recent Grouper album, was beautiful and sleep inducing, haunting and tiring at the same time. Harris's music can be characterized by song titles the likes of "We've All Gone to Sleep" and "Heavy Water /I'd Rather Be Sleeping". Its soft and slow, frequently bordering on ambient. Yet there's something beautiful and accessible to Groupers music that most ambient lacks. It feels like its coming from the bed of an ocean or the deepest recesses of your bed, its enchanting and inviting, it makes you feel safe and unnerved at the same time, as it can be quite creepy.
The latest Grouper output is the distant "AIA: Alien Observer", which has Harris going back to her roots pre "Dragging a Dead...". Her voice is more layered and obscured by various sounds. Where her previous LP took away a lot of the fuzz that shrouds Grouper tracks, "Alien Observer", brings it back, though admittingly to a more sparing degree then some older albums. Highlights of the album are the title track, unusually short for a Grouper track at less then four minutes, it has Harris floating above the song, rather then controlling it. Her voice adds to the haunting atmosphere and indeed serves largely as a setting rather then a director of the music.
What makes Harris's story tragic is the fact that she will never come to obvious prominence in the music community. While her albums have attracted attention and a good set of followers (myself included), her music is slow and requires an attention span far surpassing that of the average music listener (ya I'm a snob, so what?).
Buy Groupers music, support those artists that test the patience of listeners. Or I'll get you. Or something, whatever.
Alien Observer - Grouper
Grouper: "Alien Observer" by alteredzones
She Loves Me That Way - Grouper
Grouper - She Loves Me That Way by Add Void
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