The Artist: Grouper
Grouper is Liz Harris. Oregon-based, reclusive and quietly mythic. She grew up in a coastal commune, surrounded by fog, quiet and ritual. Her songs still sound like that.
Before music, she studied visual art in San Francisco. You can hear it - the attention to texture, to negative space, to what isn’t said.
She started self-releasing ambient collages in the early 2000s - tape loops, field recordings, ghosts. But she didn’t stay abstract. By the time Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill arrived in 2008, Harris had begun to write something closer to songs. Still veiled in reverb. Still flickering like memory. But more human. More haunted.
She records at home. She rarely performs. Grouper isn’t a persona.
It’s a mood. A low tide.
The Record: Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008)
This is the album where Grouper’s voice steps forward - still veiled in reverb, still obscured, but suddenly human.
Recorded on a four-track, it feels unfiltered and handmade.
You can hear the room.
Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping is a lullaby with no fixed shape - her voice flickering like a candle in wind.
Stuck sounds like it’s sinking in slow motion. Just a few chords, a feeling and the sense that something’s ending.
Fishing Bird (Empty Gutted in the Evening Breeze) - yes, that’s the real title - is as fragile as its name.
There are no choruses. No hooks.
The tape hiss becomes part of the rhythm. The silences part of the structure.
This isn’t lo-fi as aesthetic.
It’s lo-fi as intention.
Play Now:
🔊 Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube
Start With:
- Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping - Soft devastation
- Stuck - Melancholy as a slow fade
- Fishing Bird… - Delicate and disintegrating