Grouper - Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill

Grouper. Not the fish, the musical pseudonym of Oregon multi-media artist Liz Harris. She grew up in a cult. As far as i can tell it's not a particularly malevolent cult, its main attributes appear to be esotetic pretentiousness and "dances." Look, from what i've read about Fourth Way it's basically everything i've ever said: focus on where you are and which direction you're going. You can't really control what direction that is, so just really focus and adapt. Basically, live intentionally. My way you don't have to hide in a commune or ironically deify your leader. If i'm your leader, you've got way bigger problems than imagining that the universe obeys the fundamental nature of a piano keyboard can solve. That's the Law of Seven in a nutcase, i mean shell. You do you. The second cosmic law is the Law of Three, but that's so banal i can't even justify making fun of it. You don't gots to travel to the mystical magical east to understand ternary logic, 3 is just basic gestalt type stuff. 

So, Grouper is the term the restless Fourth Way teenagers would use to identify themselves, and since music is just groups of sounds, Liz very pragmatically decided to group sounds together to form music under the stage name Grouper. Logic works, good enough for me. 

If you're expecting to be able to understand the syllables she's singing, then this will not be a thing you immediately enjoy unless you're intentionally trying to. Most of her output is decidedly Experimental-Ambient, and everyone pretty much unanimously agrees these are the closest things to pop songs she's ever produced. I'm cool with that. 

Why both these albums? Well, both albums came from the same sessions. She recorded a bunch of songs and assembled Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. The leftovers she just kind of kept in her back pocket until some better idea came up, but eventually she released them as The Man Who Died In His Boat. The people on the covers are her and her mother, respectively. Both albums were re/published in tandem by Kranky in 2013, and i just got my hands on the latest represses, with only a minor bit of intense agitation in the process. Now for that story. 

I ordered them on bandcamp like i do, and then an hour later i get an email saying they won't ship to pseudonyms and i need to change it. I politely responded, that's not how things work after you already have my money. Ship them or refund. Also, please peruse the actual bandcamp order that has my "real name" on it. Like i said, i wrote politer words than that, but that's what those words meant. I'm testy about it for 17 ultra-specific reasons, but i'll only bore you guys and gals with the top several. 

First, not mailing to pseudonyms is a made up restriction. Second, it's a verified paypal account matched to my address, meaning it's me and i live there. 3rd) Dude, you run your Chicago based record label from an Oregon PO box, so ixnay on the ade-shay? 4th) no name or tag or anything to sign off on the email, so i don't even know who i'm telling to eat me. 5th) i ship UPS professionally and you can put whatever name you want in the name box. 6th) this all speaks to one of my much larger pet peeves about life, the increasing complexity of handing people money for a thing i want. 

Hello ranty paragraph, it's good to see you again. I don't want your rewards card, i don't want your junk mail, i don't want a cutesy shaped hole punch for a free 12th cupcake or luke warm sausage muffin with congealed cheese-colored substance, i don't care that my air filter is dirty, i don't care that that one is 30-cents cheaper, i want to pay you for the thing and go about my day as cheerfully as possible. Things cost what they cost, if i don't like it or can't afford it i'll just leave or not go there in the first place. Nothing about modern corporate pretend life is important, it's all stupid. Never once in my life have i had buyer's remorse. I do have crippling seller's paranoia, i get physically sick thinking that you'll get home and find something to be mad about. I know where that comes from, it comes from people just giving me stuff they don't want anymore. I feel guilty for charging people money for stuff i just do because i feel like it. I doubt that's Mr. Kranky's modus operandi, but i don't doubt he gets way worse junk mail and scam purchases than i do, so i'm empathizing here. Regardless, the point i'm trying to illustrate is that it's really frustrating for me to hit a brick wall when honestly buying stuff because i put a hell of a lot of effort into not letting my own neuroses out into the world (these posts don't count in that respect). Let me freakin' buy it already. The whole thing is ridiculous, me included. 

Now, where were we? I dunno so we'll just go back to the craw that address thing is sticking into. Kranky Ltd. is incorporated to a PO Box in Oregon and the principle is Joel Leoschke. I know Delaware is a corporate tax haven, is Oregon as well? Did he relocate from Chicago? Was it actually Liz who sent that email under the branding of Kranky? That's my theory. Kranky is just a holding company whose actual business is sending their highly gatekeeped artists copies of their own albums and pre-stamped and branded packaging materials. They sell "corporate services" under their liability. Doesn't help that their website is just links to various front end marketplaces and their submission policy is basically "don't." Shade. They aren't unique in that respect, that's pretty standard business stuff in an overly litigious society. Thanks, Republicans. 

I'm not telling you any of that to criticize or bad-mouth anyone. I'm simply describing in as much detail as possible my own perception of the situation, and i could be anywhere on the vast right-wrong spectrum. If this were a customer service survey, the extent of my peevishness would be that i hope Kranky's kite gets stuck in a tree. It's all unimportant garbage i have to jettison somewhere, and that's a well-documented thing i don't like: pointless garbage. So to sum up, getting these records felt exactly as laborious as dragging a dead deer up a hill. Deer are heavy. 

Oh yeah, now i remember, listening to them, that's the actual important bit. I stumbled across Grouper the way i always find new music, by intentionally searching for new music to listen to. Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill grabbed my attention, i listened to a couple tracks, read comments that The Man Who Died In His Boat was its conceptual sister album, and bought both so i could write about them. I make absolutely zero money for writing these reviews because no one pays me money for writing them. No ads on my blog, no serious attempt at marketing whatsoever. Ask my friends, i buy their albums and write about them too. It'd be nice to make money for writing these things, but that's not up to me. Someone else has to decide to pay me. You can send some money to paypal.me/pnmit, but i can't make you, i'll still keep writing them, and i don't actually care. I have a job, i'm good. I'd rather this be my job, but again that's got very little to do with me because tricking you into paying me is not a job i want. If you're questioning last week's youtube-athon, keep in mind that i did at one time buy copies of all those albums, and i let the ads interrupt the listening. I consider that fair enough on my end. I'd buy a new old copy of Fountains of Wayne, but not for the same cost as these two albums, i'd much rather pay now people for their music. 

Sonically, i think Liz says it best, it sounds like the album is just slowly sinking to the bottom of a pond or lake. Not surprisingly, Caretaker often gets mentioned, and sure this is like a couple hours in to the degradation process. The surface is pretty much all reverb, and all the various melodic instruments and heavily overdubbed vocals bubble up from under the blanket of murky low end. The primary accompaniment is constant 8th-note down-strumming on an acoustic guitar. Big reverberant chords with as many open strings as possible, and plenty of minor 2nd/major 7th dissonance adding their own haunting ripples. It sounds completely lost in water and forest, and content to be so. It also sounds exactly like my own mental image of the Pacific Northwest, fog and rain and a little chilly, like the visuals from Twin Peaks. [Snap] there we go. It sounds the way Twin Peaks looks, but maybe not quite so absurdly mystical. 

It makes me want to hear Deerhunter again. Not just because their earlier albums were also published by Kranky, but because "dead deer." That of course means we haven't given Dead Boat Guy its proper listenary describarant, but that's ok, we'll keep it in our back pocket and pull it out when i have a better context in which to unbottle it ;) 

Whew, this was a long one, huh? Thanks for reading it, and check out Grouper if/when you get the chance. I love her music, and I'd also love to hear your thoughts.