Latest Release
- APR 13, 2024
- 3 Songs
- Inca Ore / Grouper · 2008
- Grid of Points · 2018
- Inca Ore / Grouper · 2008
- Ruins · 2014
- Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill · 2008
- Roy Montgomery / Grouper · 2009
- Shade · 2021
- A I A: Alien Observer · 2011
- Paradise Valley - Single · 2016
- Shade · 2021
Essential Albums
- Ethereal, spectral, and absolutely gorgeous, AIA: Alien Observer was easily one of 2011's finest releases. Yet what genre do we stick this woozy and slowly evolving stuff into? Is it experimental or alternative rock? It’s hard to find an act as purely interested in experimentation and melody with equal measure. No matter what you’re doing when you first hear music by Liz Harris (a.k.a. Grouper), after a few minutes it’s hard to not find yourself doing nothing but listening. It has that kind of intense, vacuum effect, drawing you in. Take a song like “Moon Is Sharp,” where layers of reverb swim atop a sea of echo, slowly unveiling a gently strummed electric guitar and a pretty singing voice. The way the slowly reverberating sounds morph from abstract pleasure to pop bliss and then smudge themselves back into an ambient smear is surprisingly cathartic. It sounds good, too.
- 2021
- 2018
- 2014
Artist Playlists
- Lo-fi ambient music at its most personal and beguiling.
Singles & EPs
- 2024
- 2017
- 2010
Appears On
- Xiu Xiu
About Grouper
Liz Harris’ mission as Grouper has always been to investigate the possibility of a simpler life without challenges. The lo-fi songwriter and audio collagist (born in 1980 and raised in Oregon) questions the difference between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, found and intentional sounds, and the way that love can blind some people to the truth. She broke through with 2008’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, featuring the standout cut “Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping,” which captures powerful, cathartic emotions with little more than an acoustic guitar and looping, enchanting lines about the necessity of losing control in order to feel true love. On 2011’s A I A: Alien Observer, she turns barely-there instrumentation into powerful hooks. Harris treats each Grouper album as its own world, like 2018’s Grid of Points, which is an exercise in piano and voice. Whatever her tools, though, Harris manages to create music at its most elemental: Hers is stripped down to its most necessary components, demonstrating that all too often, noise is only used to distract.
- HOMETOWN
- West Marin, CA, United States
- BORN
- July 15, 1980
- GENRE
- Alternative