Review Summary: Come get lost in the fog.....
Liz Harris is such a beautiful, mysterious human being. Harris has been releasing music under the Grouper moniker since 2005 and her take on folk tinged drone/ambient music is nothing short of haunting yet majestic at the same time. She has a special way of maintaining a hazy, foggy atmosphere while always keeping the underlying sense of dread in the background.
Cover the Windows and the Walls is an album of Grouper’s that always seems to be lost in the mix. It doesn’t quite have as much of the natural feeling of
Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill or the extremely dark atmosphere of
Ruins, but it is just as special as any other album in her discography. This particular album doesn’t have the best production, but that actually ends up working in it’s favor. The title track is the opener and it gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect. There’s plenty of reverb and static in the guitar tone with Harris’ stunning and absolutely bone chilling yet mellow vocals muffled in the background.
While the sound of the album may be a turn off to some people, it’s absolutely what makes Grouper’s music so special. You have to pay attention to every detail when listening to this type of music. Everything is chaotic, the guitars may sound out of tune and the vocals always seem to be buried beneath all the reverb but that all works to create something truly soul-stirring. Grouper can give you the feeling that you’re floating on a cloud, like you’re lost in the mountains with rain pouring down on you or that you’re tripping balls on acid with little control of what’s going on around you and everything in between.
While
Cover the Windows and the Walls may not stand out in a discography full of gems, it certainly deserves it’s place. This is just another example of Liz Harris proving that she’s a force to be reckoned with. Harris’ music never gets stale. It’s sublime and terrifying and organic and so many other things. It flows so well together that you’ll lose track of time and get completely immersed in the misty atmosphere, and that’s exactly what it sets out to accomplish.
