The 12th full-length by Pacific Northwest artist Liz Harris aka Grouper is a collection of songs spanning 15 years.
She characterizes Shade as an album about respite, and the coast, poetically and literally. How we frame ourselves in a landscape, how in turn it frames ourselves; memories and experiences carried forward mapping our connection to place.
Songs touch on loss, flaws, hiding places, love. Deep connections to the Bay Area, and the North Coast, with its unique moods of solitude, beauty, and isolation—a place described and transformed by the chaos and power of river-mouth, wild maritime storms, columns of mist that rise up unexpectedly on the road at night. Portions were recorded on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency years back, other pieces made longer ago in Portland, while the rest were tracked during more recent sessions in Astoria. Throughout, Harris threads a hidden radiant language of voice, disquiet, and guitar, framed by open space and the sense of being far away.
Grouper is the solo project of American musician, artist and producer Liz Harris. Grouper has collaborated with a number of other artists, including Xiu Xiu, Tiny Vipers (Mirrorring), Roy Montgomery, The Bug, Lawrence English (Slow Walkers), and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma (Raum).
