Welcome to User’s Manual – a segment that helps listeners find a suitable entry point within an unfamiliar artist’s discography, or to reinvigorate someone’s interest in a certain artist by breaking down their work to a molecular level, allowing the listener to then piece back together the elements that helped them fall in love with the artist in the first place.
For the second edition of User’s Manual, we’re focusing on an artist that I’ve been deeply enamored with since midway through college: Grouper! Grouper is the main musical alias of Portland, OR’s Liz Harris, who has been releasing music since 2005. She specializes in cosmically layered ambient drone, primarily with her own vocals and other field recordings, along with spare folk elements like acoustic + electric guitar or piano + keys thrown in. Her music is most times formless, allowing waves of sound to breathe and exist in a certain space she’s crafted for each song, helping the listener conjure up visuals or meaning behind the largely ambiguous lyrics and melodies Harris creates. There is a certain quality, a humidity in the air, that always permeates through Grouper releases. I don’t know exactly what it is or how she does it, but the familiarity of the atmosphere is not repetitive, only reassuring. It’s such a simple combination every time, but it succeeds.
The way she produces and arranges her music creates some kind of aural vortex around the listener in a way that’s totally overwhelming but also comforting. I know that being in a real life vortex is no joke, but something about existing in a chaotic din of grayscale noise with disembodied, smeared vocals stretching around you has a calming effect, much like a security blanket during a storm, or a warm bath after coming in from the cold. But getting back to the open-endedness: if you find more comfort in imagining yourself lost in a snowstorm, wandering listlessly in a field with no signs of life except for a lone lantern that doesn’t seem to be getting any closer – her music can satisfy that need as well. It’s at both times heavenly and foreboding depending on your mood. I wouldn’t say her entire discography follows these rules, with lots of lo-fi early material going for a more cathartic, noisy and chaotic approach, but her later works are up for interpretation in this framework. On the baseline, though, it feels incredibly human and natural, organic and grown straight from an emotive spirit.
Now that we have an idea of what we’re getting into here, I’m going to chronologically break down Harris’ discography. First with her main releases as Grouper, then moving onto the various splits, side projects and alter-aliases, then finally onto some rogue singles that I’d kick myself for not including. After getting a good idea on what everything in the discography sounds like (for the most part), I go into certain specific sounds or emotions for each release with bite-size summaries in the “I’m Looking For…” section. Lastly, I try my best at a flowchart to help you with your musical journey through Grouper’s vast catalog of releases, choosing two albums that can be your potential liftoff points that can take you into markedly different territories. Harris has accumulated something resembling a devoted cult around all her material (I feel lucky to count myself as a member), so I hope I don’t peeve any Grouper-heads with my analysis. In the end though, this is about discovery. There’s a lot to choose from here, so I hope you do end up finding something you love. And Liz if you somehow end up reading this: thank you for releasing your art to the wild, it has helped a lot of people out.
MAIN DISCOGRAPHY:
- Grouper (2005)
Ultra-distorted ambient drone. Multiple tracks have sections with peaking audio, further obscuring the intricate folds of the instrumentals. Harris’ voice is pure and soothing for the most part, occasionally cutting through or co-existing with the din. It’s like peering outside during an intense thunderstorm to see a pristine meadow in the distance, untouched by the angry clouds above. - Way Their Crept (2005)
Murky drones of voice and distorted piano. Some of the same songs featured on Grouper, just a lot more mellowed out. Think a Julianna Barwick album, with plumes of echoing voice, but quite a bit fuzzier and dissonant.
- Wide (2006)
Much like Way Their Crept, only with additional electric guitar, adding another layer of distorted noise to the mix. Bits of higher-fidelity recording popping up, like the piano on “Giving It To You”. Still very murky and mysterious. - Cover the Windows and the Walls (2007)
A return to the more wall of sound drone, but much more developed and nuanced. Sonically similar to Grouper but not as intense. She still performs the title track!
- Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008)
Disintegrating, gorgeous dream folk (if that’s an enticing genre for you). With this album, Grouper defined her own sound and made it nearly impossible to put one solid label upon her music. Not dream folk, not drone folk, not ambient pop. It’s just Grouper – that’s all you need to say. After predominantly being obscured by sonic interference, Harris emerges from the cloud with tender vocals to go alongside slow, wafting instrumentals that range from currents of building noise to straightforward acoustic guitar tunes. The guitars sound like they’re drifting away like dandelion spores, or like a marsh of beach reeds undulating in the ocean breeze. Grouper’s voice is not at the total front end of the mix like a pop singer, but the balance between every element is perfect. The keys, the guitar, the voice, the effects – everything is in its right place sonically and arrangement-wise. Monumental record right here.
- A | A: Alien Observer (2011)
The crown jewel of Grouper’s ambient records. Takes the approach of her first four records, but allows her voice to come forward like on Dead Deer. This gorgeous balance of hazy textures and clean vocals, along with a high-fidelity approach overall leads to some of Grouper’s best songs like the title track and “Vapor Trails”. This also seems to be the first mostly ambient album where silence and dynamics come into play in a big way, with Harris leaving lots of empty space in between her notes instead of flooding it all with sheets of noise.
- A | A: Dream Loss (2011)
The companion to Alien Observer. Definitely more distorted and ambiguous than the former, but no less beautiful. The songs are more similar to her pre-Deer material sonically, but with like Observer, with more focus on dynamics and balance. “I Saw A Ray” is a good example of a destructive, cleansing drone that sounds rough, but doesn’t drown out the other beautiful components of the song along with it.
- Violet Replacement Pt. 1 (2012)
One long piece called “Rolling Gate”. Nearly 37 minutes of a continuous drone, erring towards the side of ominous rather than calming or even ambiguous. Layers of disembodied voice merge together and a slowed down melody is performed overhead. It sounds like you’ve been submerged in a water tank with an William Basinski-like piece is being performed outside. Distant, like in a dream. The further you go into the piece, the further you are consumed by noise, making for a cacophonous finish. - Violet Replacement Pt. 2 (2012)
A 51-minute piece called “Sleep”. Like Pt. 1, it feels like it exists in a dream, but instead of being consumed by the dream you are released by it. By the end you disembark from a decompressed voyage through space and time, slowly coming to as the fabricated textures slowly filter away, becoming gently caressed by the sounds of heavy rain on the window next to you and fragments of the dream linger within your subconscious. - The Man Who Died In His Boat (2013)
Returning to the hazy folk on Dead Deer, while also embracing the foggy ambient of the A|A releases. There are more straightforward, confident tracks here with just guitar and voice and less emphasis on murky distortion or feedback. However tracks like “Being Her Shadow” “STS” and “Difference (Voices)” could have felt at home in the A | A universe. “Living Room” is either my #1 or #2 Grouper song, by the way!
- Ruins (2014)
The most direct Grouper album and in my opinion the most cleansing and healing of her records. Like having a presence accompanying you in an isolated hour. Less of a focus on overwhelming noise, but more on the interplay between piano, lullaby-like vocal melodies and silence. You can almost feel the rooms she recorded these songs in the way the sound of the piano reverberates through the album. Half the songs are purely instrumental, splitting the shine between Harris’ lyrics and vocals and the grace of her piano playing and compositional skills. The final track “Made of Air” is a return to the ambiguous fog similar to Violet Replacement. “Lighthouse” reminds me of my childhood home with its chirping frogs in the background – a staple summer memory.
- Grid Of Points (2018)
Another spare yet evocative collection of voice + piano + field recordings. Where Harris’ voice was at the center stage of her compositions on Ruins, she blends in more with her surroundings on Grid Of Points, with layers upon layers of her own voice are swirled in with a cloudy piano, leading to a misty, coordinated meditation.
Read more for Side Projects + discography flowchart!
