There are some songs that are just right for a mood, or a mourning, or a gray, misty, cloudy-cold morning that wraps around the sky and the city like a hovering depression. I have found myself shoving my hands into my coat-pockets lately, turning my collar up to the cold and losing myself in one song in particular:
Grouper: Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping
Apparently, this song, and the rest of the surrounding, heartbroken morning fog-hazed songs surrounding it on Portland-based Liz “Grouper”Harris’ recently released album Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill, is a departure in sound a bit for what Grouper’s known for. I won’t pretend like I have any frame of comparison whatsoever-my Grouper knowledge is limited to this album, suggested to me via Telefon Tel Aviv’s Josh Eustis in an interview you can read right here. What I found is a collection of songs displaced from time, haunted by flecks and echos of a distant 4AD past yet running full-on into a hopeless present. These are some of the drowsiest, prettiest, heart-tugging compositions I’ve heard this year-I say “compositions” because despite the presence of vocals the lyrics are often indescernable and serve as just another instrument in the mist-and “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping” is by far the gem amongst all keepers. Even when Grouper is singing about massive intent, heavy hearts and the enormity of emotion, lids are still heavy and the sonic pallette is still mumbled and muffled and shot entirely through a clouded lense. This is a song for sleepwalkers, all those who have and all those who daily continue to do so.
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