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March 28, 2024, 11:04:06 AM

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Grouper

Started by Shay Chaise, September 28, 2017, 11:03:25 PM

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Shay Chaise

I always think about starting a thread about Grouper but I never know really what to say. For someone who works with so little, usually just vocals plus piano or guitar, her music is unmistakable and beautiful. Yes, everything is usually smothered with thick reverb and delay but she's got something special, a sensibility or an instinct which makes her stand out.

I first fell for the album Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill around 2008 or so, after a recommendation. It's ghostly, sounds like it's recorded through a dictaphone and it's utterly captivating. It's all about her voice shining a guiding light through the fog. It sounds like more than it is, if you know what I mean. There's a sense of place or of her tapping into something, some feeling I've not had elsewhere. The opener, Disengaged, tells you most everything you need to know about Grouper.

I tried to get into some of her other stuff, she's quite prolific, and I foolishly decided it was all too similar for me. It's kind of true, mind you, she certainly hit the ground running with her sound back in 2005, with Way Their Crept, and I felt that 'Dead Deer' was enough for me.

Fast forward a couple of years and I gave her double album A|A a go and was absolutely floored by the opening songs. Moon Is Sharp, Alien Observer and Vapor Trails became the ne plus ultra of Grouper for me. The melodies no longer pierced the fog, they were the fog, and if you tried to hold onto them, they would dissipate immediately. You just have to surround yourself and stay still. There's also a sincerity and weight to her music, no matter how pretty it is, enveloping to the point of suffocation, and I think that's what gets under your skin.

For a few years afterwards, I heard almost nothing from her. She released and rereleased various 7" recordings, she did some visual art and textiles stuff, she did a few one-off shows at museums and the like. She rereleased some old Dead Deer era outtakes and so on and I thought again that I had enough and that I didn't need any more Grouper in my collection. Again, I surprise myself at how much of a fool I can be.

And then she released Ruins, which had been recorded a couple of years earlier, just her and a piano. It's possibly her most direct record and yet the singing is barely above a whisper. I really fell in love with it. The song Clearing is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard, and I can't really put it into words. It's sort of the patience it inspires. It's transportive, like all of her best music, but from a compositional point of view, it seems so perfectly constructed. Every time the chorus swoops in, I'm lifted, every time, and then it puts you back down so gently. It could go on and on forever. Sometimes I listen to it when I'm really happy just to enjoy the luxury of feeling sad and being carried back up. It's more than sad, it's a very special feeling, seeing entropy on the horizon and knowing that everything will not just die but utterly disintegrate, even water, and appreciating these last few timeless moments of being together and simply being. Every memory and experience you ever had meaning less than nothing to the universe and meaning absolutely everything to you.

Anyone else spending their time listening to Grouper?


VelourSpirit

Really beautifully described! I've listened to Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill and I absolutely love the first two songs, but while I enjoy the rest of the album it washes over me a bit. I'm sure it'll click and I'll love it like you did, happens quite a lot for me with other bands. I listened to the AIA albums the other day and I think I really liked them - can't really remember any of the songs but I rarely do on first listens.

Repeater


Repeater

Nice write up. I like what I've heard from here but a bit put-off by the volume of her work. What songs would you say sum up each era? Excited to listen to Clearning!

hewantstolurkatad

Quote from: Repeater on September 29, 2017, 08:39:50 AM
id rather be sleeping
Yep, Grouper has a huge problem for me in that Heavy Water is just so fucking good that it's kinda hard to get past it.

VelourSpirit

When Disengaged ends and the guitar of Heavy Water comes in... just really beautiful, perfect opening two tracks.

holyzombiejesus

She's playing London soon, along with The Caretaker.

jobotic

Have you heard Helen, her shoegaze band?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaDAqFBzC1w

Her Fact mix is worth a listen too, all obscure English folk.

http://www.factmag.com/2013/04/22/fact-mix-379-grouper/


NattyDread 2

Nice post. Reminds me I must revisit the old stuff and check out the new. Haven't listened to her for ages, but I'm always stopped in my tracks when I do.

Shay Chaise

Quote from: jobotic on September 30, 2017, 09:27:45 PM
Have you heard Helen, her shoegaze band?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaDAqFBzC1w

Her Fact mix is worth a listen too, all obscure English folk.

http://www.factmag.com/2013/04/22/fact-mix-379-grouper/

Thanks very much for both of these. I'll let them soak in.

On that note, I've been hammering Heavy Water, absolutely stunning song, one which I'd taken as part of the whole before but it's really hitting me on its own. Very powerful lilting melody, aching but uplifting. I'd love to see her one day.

amoral

I've been listening to her for a few days thanks to this thread. As soon as I started digging into it I had no desire to listen to anything else. It's perfect for the time of year and my state of mind at the moment. Heartbreaking, beautiful stuff. I love the lo-if aspect of it as well. It adds to the droning, murky quality which only makes the beauty that shines through all the more special.
She Loves Me That Way is, I don't even know...overwhelming. There are many like that though, that's just the one that comes to mind at the moment.

Key

Massive Grouper fan, it's easy to fall into the black hole of her discography as the nights draw in. Like many others I got into her music after Dragging A Dead Deer... popped up on many end of year lists. I've tried to follow everything she's done since.  I like how her music has gradually shifted from the dark abstract drone to the more song-oriented stuff, (culminating in stuff like the Helen record and last year's Paradise Valley 7") with many shades of grey inbetween the two modes. 'Dragging A Dead Deer...' and 'The Man Who Died In his Boat' seem to master the acoustic guitar & voice dark folky sound, she flits between wurlitzer, electric guitar, and piano amongst other instruments, and it all sounds coherent. I think she does have an usual delicate sense of melody which is helped along by her almost vacant delivery/performance and an unusually pure vocal tone.
I saw her in a church in Hackney playing the songs off Ruins on electric guitar and it was amazing. She's one of those artists who pretty much rework the songs live so they sound completely new, you often have to wait til halfway through until you recognise them. Wouldn't mind going to see her collab with the Caretaker, hope it gets some kind of release anyway.

Here are some deep cuts:

False Horizon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E8sRF5itWY

Water People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMthKt5pwRQ

Poison Tree (live)
https://youtu.be/MZTYJUhNyAI?t=837

Everyone In Turn
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ask19JAmnQ

amoral

Droney Mitchell is a fun thing you could call her.

I'm on my bullshit and Grouper is all I really want or need to hear. The OP made me cry reading it back. What a wonderful person she is and what a special sensibility she has for life and the very particular flavour it has if you're attuned.

Clearing and Heavy Water are both like hymns for me. The kind of thing I wish my friends and family understood and adored inside out and down to their very bones like I do. I have nobody to share this love with but that seems perfectly appropriate for Grouper. Just me and Liz spiralling and getting lost in the shadows.