Shade - Grouper: Review
Grouper
is the musical project of singer and songwriter Liz Harris who has received loads of critical acclaim across her long career in a myriad of genres. From indie folk to ambient to a nearly undefinable blend of psychedelic folk micro genres. Shade follows Liz's previous album Grid Of Points in 2018 which was a short but conceptual experiment with minimalism. Shade takes that indulgence to a whole new level with some of the most sonically reserved folk tunes of 2021.
Review By Lav:
Everyone has their favorite Grouper project and for most people it's 2008's Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. While I love that record I also have to say that in 2011 she followed it up with A I A Alien Observer, an ambient record unlike anything else I've ever heard in the genre. So when I heard some of the early press I got pretty excited about the promise she made to continue fusing extreme minimalism and ambient music traits into her songs and she absolutely did not disappoint. If the singles from the record didn't initially blow you away then you're in the same boat I was, but trust me if you like intimate soundplay within dense soundscapes this is likely to be one of the best albums you hear this year.
I don't want to wait one second longer to talk about the highlights from this album starting with the opener Followed The Ocean. It's a riveting opener caked in a thick haze of nostalgic fog that makes it so difficult to make out any of the songs finer details. It feels to raw and gentle despite being such a massive and consuming sound and I just love it as an opener. Disordered Minds is a total masterpiece nearly entirely encapsulated by an impenetrable mix that brings out the emotionally overwhelming performance at its core. On top of being one of the best written songs here the unbelievably dense amount of instrumentation that gets blended into the haze is one of the most intoxicating things I've heard all year.
Basement Mix is a spacious chamber folk song with seemingly infinite space for sounds to stretch into the distance. It allows all the sounds to blend together in the distance and it's all so eerie and chilling. The song slowly starts to come more and more into shape culminating in more omnipresent refrains across the last minute but never really breaking its damp hush. It's a really beautiful moment. Unclean Mind is probably my favorite of the singles as a touchingly sweet and intimate folk song that I find legitimately catchy.
Speaking of singles we got to hear the closing track Kelso before the album dropped and while I wasn't crazy about it at first I think it makes for an excellent closer. It has a much more conventional mix that sounds like a gasp of life from the album after the half hour of music that preceded it. I really appreciate what it brings to the album in terms of a meaningful and varied conclusion. Before that finale there are a few songs in a row that indulge in a really interesting sonic experiment. They're ballad type songs that stop and start frequently throughout the song and let in lots of studio background noise. I think the intent is to pull you into the 3D space in which the song was being recorded and while it does pull that off perfectly I don't find it to be one of the most impactful sonic choices here.
Pale Interior is about as lowkey as a stool and guitar folk song can get with the sliding guitar strings being much louder than any of Liz's singing. While the sound of the song itself isn't incredibly compelling it does have an irresistible sway to it and a genuine anguish to the vocals despite how reserved they are. Finally I'm not crazy about Ode To The Blue which seems like it's a fan favorite and I'm not sure why. It breezes by in less then 3 minutes without ever really hitting with anything all that notable.
Shade is obviously not going to be for everyone but for me it's the most interesting Grouper album in quite a long time. Not only is the record impressively committed to its reserved songwriting and production style, but it also interpolates some extremely impactful abstraction without breaking the fragility of it all. While I can see complaints emerging about some of the albums more uninvolved individual moments, when I look back on this thing as a whole I think it's really good. Liz didn't need to prove that she was a master of any of these elements, we already knew that about her. But on Shade she shows off her ability to blend it all together into a remarkably cohesive and intimate listening experience. 8/10
The minimalism of this cover is nice but this is leaning towards the ridiculous side of it. All of the factors are there but it's so small and hard to see. If it was just a little bit larger and more legible I would enjoy it a lot more. The colors aren't vibrant enough to be this small and the subject is easy to get confused. 4.5/10
