GROUPER
Shade KRANKY
By Jon Dale
Grouper’s Liz Harris: still in a state of “radical flux”
GORDON ASHWORTH
9/10
Gorgeously deep water-songs, singing out from Oregon’s North Coast.
“THE Columbia river mouth is a chaotic and beautiful place,” Liz Harris, aka Grouper, reflects, discussing the relationship between the elements and her music, and thinking about where she currently lives, in Astoria, Oregon. “It is a doorway to the ocean, always in radical flux. The tide, the wind, the current, the rain. We get maritime weather here that does not hit the rest of the coast. Storms calm/reassure me.”
This observation may surprise longtime listeners to Grouper, who often find a beatific radiance in Harris’s blurred, dissolving songs. But it speaks to the way oppositions oscillate in Grouper’s music, something particularly noticeable on her latest album, Shade.