Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill

With a title as dreary and hopeless as *Dragging a Dead Dear Up a Hill*, Liz Harris\' third proper Grouper LP doesn\'t exactly present itself as an uplifting listen. And you know what? It isn\'t. Yet here we are, unable to ignore Harris\' ambient haze, a self-conscious cloud of delay/distortion effects that can\'t quite contain the inherent beauty of her sleep-deprived hooks. Well hooks in a general sense, since most Grouper songs sound like they were literally submerged in water, leaving generous layers of rust and decaying drone tones behind. Harris revealz a full-on melody in the rickety bridge of \"Heavy Water / I\'d Rather Be Sleeping.\" It\'s a doozy, too, making us long for a Grouper LP that completely lifts the veil off Harris\' phantom vocals. For now, though, we\'re more than content witnessing her fevered dreams — mood music that generates the same numbing sensation as tossing a pile of sepia-toned photos in a fire. 

Strong melodies and actual songs always lurked deep inside-- or perhaps underneath-- the music of Liz Harris' Grouper, but you had to work to hear them underneath layers of sonic muck; here, she strips away much of the effects-laden gauze and the result is an arresting album of pastoral psychedelic pop.

Liz Harris' first two Grouper albums, Way Their Crept and Wide, consisted mostly of layers of her pristine vocals blanketed in drones, reverb, and distortion until they blurred into a blissful, and sometimes eerie, haze.

I'd hate to place too much emphasis on this sort of thing, but when an album this gauzy and shimmering starts with a song called

Grouper - Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill review: Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill is not an album I’d recommend to just anyone; an audience will eventually find Grouper, and when they do, it’ll be more than well-deserved.