Haunted Ghost’s Chanson du Jour: hangover drift edition

Grouper :: Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping

I’m going to take it back to 2008 here, when I was having trouble sleeping , often staring at the myriad lightbulbs and leaves I had hanging from my ceiling, watching the light from passing cars playing through the windows. During the peak of my insomnia, blasting the Fuck Buttons remix of Fever Ray’s If I Had a Heart, trying to find some way to close my eyelids and surrender to slumber, I stumbled on Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, the (at the time) new record from Portland, OR based Grouper - the ambient, electronic/acoustic/vocal solo project of Liz Harris. Sleep came quickly, and the dreams were mystical and vibrant. I could feel the music being transposed into my dreamscape, the hollow, beautiful echo of Harris’ vocals reverberating in my skull, the glorious, constant soft strum of her guitar like a lullaby or like an ocean. It was a feeling which I could only articulate as “in drift” or somewhere between flying and floating.

Grouper has released a slew of rare 7”s, splits (with such bands as City Center, Pumice, Inca Ore, and most recently a 12” split with Roy Montgomery and  another  7” with Xela), as well as a collaboration with Xiu Xiu called Creepshow (which is a dynamo. simply put it is a powerhouse record). Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is the fifth and most recent full length she has put out, firmly supplanting Harris as a musical force to be reckoned with and making its way onto many Top 50 Albums of 2008 (including making 37th on Pitchfork’s Top 50). Grouper has been playing occasional live performances here or there, but she is definitely a rare sighting. If you ever get the chance, go to a Grouper show, but don’t fall asleep, just drift.