This spring, I was at a dinner party where the host played Grouper’s April 2011 two part Yellowelectric release, A I A: Dream Loss / A I A: Alien Observer, and prefaced it with, “the new Grouper record sounds like Enya.”
But yet, she was still playing it over dinner, for her friends, in her home. So, yeah, maybe – if Enya put her cool pants on and stopped singing about quelling passion and hues of indigo, and started radiating in sound from another galaxy. Maybe.
That’s just the kind of music Liz Harris makes – you’re not always totally comfortable liking it, but you do. You like it. And you play it. I guess some people might say that about Enya, say, my parents circa 1993, but forget about Enya.
Grouper’s rare balance of faraway reverberations and completely beached, steady good stuff, is something else. She creates a little anxiety, even, because you’re too damn young and hip to like music this mellow, but it’s not just mellow, ambient, sound porn; it’s like being stuck under green water and looking up to see the expanse of the universe above you. And you really don’t care that you’re trapped under water because there is so much damn perfect beauty to behold. It’s really like that. The aquarium and planetarium combined.
On the real, there’s something pretty radical about music that you can eat to, sleep to, swim and stargaze to. And, again, Liz Harris – so not Enya. I realize that this review is mostly comprised of thoughts on how Grouper is not Enya. But I think that’s particularly relevant here because unless Enya and Thurston Moore procreated in an aquaratarium, Grouper will forever have nothing to do with Enya.
Later this summer, there is much new Grouper to look forward to – a self released Inca Ore/ Grouper split (!!!); an A I A repress; and, a Ballroom Marfa released 7” from Marfa residency, titled Water People. Grouper also did a song, Cassiopeia, for this Thrill Jockey Comp benefiting Japan relief efforts.
And let this be a lesson to us all: trust your instincts and don’t ever be ashamed. What you’re listening to is nothing like Enya. – Morgan Brothers