Grouper is the name of the solo project by Liz Harris (July 15, 1980), a musician, artist, and producer from West Marin, California. She first started making music independently in 2005. In 2008, she found had breakthrough with the album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill. Her musical style is considered ambient, drone, Slowcore, avant-garde folk, Psychedelic Rock, and (musical) Minimalism.
Her Stage Name, while it shares the same name as a type of fish, is actually based on her idea that music is just a "grouping of sounds," and she is just the "grouper."
Albums:
- Grouper (2005)
- Way Their Crept (2005)
- Wide (2006)
- Cover the Windows and the Walls (2007)
- Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008)
- A I A: Dream Loss (2011)
- A I A: Alien Observer (2011)
- The Man Who Died in His Boat (2013)
- Ruins (2014)
- Grid of Points (2018)
- After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house as "Nivhek" (2019)
- Shade (2021)
I'd rather be troping:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Nearly all of her album covers are this, minus Dead Deer.
- Distinct Double Album: The A I A albums, which are separated, but considered to be one album split in half.
- Echoing Acoustics: A calling card of hers. Sometimes it's hard to understand her lyrics because her vocals are so faint.
- Either/Or Title: "Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping."
- Epic Rocking: As per her Ambient style.
- Face on the Cover: The Man Who Died In His Boat is her only album cover with her face on it.
- Fading into the Next Song: All over Dead Deer.
- Hell Is That Noise: The start of "Disengaged."
- Indecipherable Lyrics: Grouper treats her voice as more of another instrument in the mix. Many of her song's certainly sound like they have lyrics, but good luck trying to figure them out. Though this isn't always the case, like with "Headache," which is more lyrically driven.
- Lighter and Softer: A I A: Alien Observer compared to A I A: Dream Loss.
- Minimalism: Her compositions are very spare.
- New Sound Album: Ruins, which is mostly piano-centric.
- One-Woman Song: "Mary, On the Wall."
- Self-Backing Vocalist: Often layers her vocals over each other many times.
- Sequel Song: "Dragging the Streets - First Heart Tone" on A I A: Dream Loss, then "Mary, On the Wall - Second Heart Tone" on A I A: Alien Observer.
- Suicide by Sea: Mentioned in "Headache."My mother once told me she walked into the ocean
Didn't want to die, just couldn't tell where the horizon was - Textless Album Cover: All of them, minus Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill and The Man Who Died In His Boat.
