Grouper

As Grouper, Liz Harris blends ambient, psychedelic, folk, and dream pop elements into equally enigmatic and affecting soundscapes. Across her extensive catalog, the singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist explores fresh facets of her approach, moving from the richly textured and more accessible songs of the 2008 release Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill to the expansive double album A I A in 2012 and the closer, more personal Grid of Points in 2018. With Shade in 2021, Harris wove these strands together to emphasize the emotional closeness that has always grounded Grouper's work.

Harris, who lives in the Pacific Northwest, entered the world in Northern California and spent her childhood in a Fourth Way commune in the Bay Area known as "The Group," whose younger members referred to themselves and their families as "groupers." That label captured both her personal sense of self and the fluid way she arranges musical ideas, leading her to adopt Grouper for the self-released, self-titled 2005 debut. She next joined Free Porcupine, which issued Way Their Crept the same year. A series of 2006 projects followed, among them the single "He Knows," the album Wide, and the collaborative EP Creepshow with Xiu Xiu. Grouper maintained a consistent release schedule, delivering the single Tried and the album Cover the Windows and Walls in 2007; Type Records also reissued Way Their Crept that year before putting out the 2008 album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, a more organized collection that brought widespread recognition and marked Harris's breakthrough.

Several shorter releases, including a split single with City Center and joint efforts with Roy Montgomery and Xela, led to the 2011 double album A I A, which encompassed both the project's most exploratory and most approachable material. Another double set, 2012's Violet Replacement, featured two extended tape-collage works prepared for commissioned performances in New York and Berkeley. Harris also partnered with Jesy Fortino of Tiny Vipers as Mirrorring, whose Foreign Body appeared in 2012, and with Lawrence English as Slow Walkers, whose self-titled EP arrived in 2013. That year additionally brought The Event of Your Leaving, recorded with Jefre Cantu-Ledesma under the name Raum, along with the Grouper album The Man Who Died in His Boat, drawn from sessions concurrent with Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. The comparatively bare, piano-centered Ruins followed in 2014, captured during a 2011 stay in southwest Portugal. In 2015 Grouper teamed with filmmaker Paul Clipson on Hypnosis Display, a Leeds Opera North commission exploring American myth-making, while Harris's noise-pop trio Helen released its first album, The Original Faces. The singles "Paradise Valley" in 2016 and "Children" in 2017 preceded the eleventh Grouper full-length, Grid of Points. Issued by Kranky in April 2018, the record consists of intimate pieces composed during a week-and-a-half creative retreat in Wyoming. Harris issued After Its Own Death/Walking in a Spiral Towards the House, the debut from her Nivhek project, in 2019. After appearing on Xiu Xiu's 2021 album Oh No, she resumed activity as Grouper with October's Shade. Assembled over fifteen years in sites such as Portland, other parts of Oregon, and Mount Talpais in California, the songs share themes of respite and the coast.