Well folks, it’s that time again. Time for me to discard all other music that’s been released in a five-year radius and begin to fully inhabit my “Grouper State of Mind” as they say. The incomparable Liz Harris has a new album coming, Shade, via Kranky on October 22, which is more or less my birthday weekend. What a splendid gift.

“Unclean mind” sees Grouper return to the guitar-based songs that broke her onto the scene with Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill and The Man Who Died In His Boat. Between those two records, Grouper switched to a more piano, ambience and field recording approach to her songwriting, yielding marvelous albums Ruins (my #19 album of the 2010s), A | A, Grid of Points, and her “side-project”, Nivhek. Although to be fair – the song “Headache”, released in 2016 (and my favorite song of the 2010s) lead with electric guitar. She’s had this bubbling below. To hear Harris’ voice over warm acoustic guitar again is a therapeutic experience, as I had tears in my eyes listening to this for the first time in bed this morning. If you’re a Grouper fan like me, you’ll be happy here. Thanks Liz.

Shade is out October 22 via Kranky. I couldn’t find any pre-order links yet, but I’ll try and update this post once one becomes live.