9/1/2023 0 Comments Grouper bandcampWhile opening track ‘Followed the ocean’ has the most extreme distortion on the album (including on her voice), Harris made a regular tactic of burying her vocals. Harris’s vocals throughout Shade are thus the most telling sign of her different recording approaches. And as someone who normally layers her vocals so artfully, that more of the seams in this technique are visible on songs such as ‘Pale Interior’ emphasises that sense of songs having been in early stages, but also lends them a different, fractured emotional quality. This lends a demo track feeling to songs with the most barebones production, a trait underscored by the lulling, plodding pace of ‘Ode to blue’ and halting approach of ‘The way her hair falls’, not to mention the false start she kept in the middle of the latter song. It’s also striking that the guitar is the prominent - really, only - instrument used on Shade. Nothing sounds out of place, nothing sounds too conspicuously clean. There is an overall lo-fi aesthetic to all of the recordings which helps to tie the newer and older songs together cohesively. Those familiar with older Grouper recordings will recognise the swampy reverb of ‘Followed the ocean’ or ‘Disordered minds’ that characterised her early work but have been absent in later years. Shade stands in stark relief from recent Grouper output first and foremost for its production qualities. Her latest album, Shade, is made up of songs spanning her career and different sessions, providing evidence that, as prolific as Harris has been - this is her twelfth album in fifteen years - there was still something left in the vaults. It’s striking to think that Liz Harris had any music she was holding back.
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