Grouper – Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill

Portland’s Liz Harris made two small, unexpected breakthroughs in 2008. The first was with regard to her music itself; the layers of noise and ambience that had smothered her already whispered vocals on her previous two albums have receded, leaving her fragile, haunting vocals exposed in a dream-pop landscape. The second concerned the reception of her music; Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill has developed a cult following and quietly took its place on a number of influential end-of-year lists last month.

Harris’ music has been consistently compared to the Cocteau Twins in reviews, but this seems a slightly lazy comparison to make; critics will hear a female vocalist under noisy, gorgeous atmospherics and join the dots. With Grouper, however, you can hear Harris’ early love of shoegaze, Slowdive in particular, in the delicately anchored guitar ambience, and even perhaps a more subdued interpretation of Sung Tongs-era Animal Collective in her hypnotic use of acoustic guitar and introspective lyrics. Harris beckons listeners into her songs with her haunting melodies and barely-there lyrics and isn’t afraid to lose them, briefly, in the hazy, dreamlike atmospheres she creates, halfway between waking and sleeping.

Sleep is something that recurs again and again on this record, in Harris’ lyrics and her song titles, mixing with other themes of the sea and dead animals to conjure up connotations of a kind of blissful drowning. ‘Disengaged’, for instance, with its delayed, picked guitar sound, sounds like it is being played underwater; Harris’ detached vocal delivery and the shimmering waves of ambience and drone that begin to wash over the song like tides mean that from the off, you’re plunged into the album, its sounds and its themes.

Pretty soon though, the clearer sounds of an acoustic guitar emerge, and you’re into ‘Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping’, a folk-pop song that yearns for Harris’ preoccupation; drenched in reverb, her voice seems to drift into some dreamlike state, but its held back by the hypnotic wordless melody that underpins her lyrics. ‘Travelling Through A Sea’, meanwhile, imitates the vast cycles of the ocean with repetitive guitar strumming, the only point of reference amid the bottomless sound being, once again, Harris’ voice. On ‘Fishing Bird (Empty Gutted In The Evening Breeze’, she sings, ‘How long can you hold your breath?’, stretching the last word out tantalisingly and perhaps rather appropriately. It’s not entirely clear whether she’s referring to the bird in the title or the listener.

Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill is a captivating record, one that rewards repeated listens and allows you to venture under its watery surfaces. Harris balances the melodic moments with snatches of ambience that help to create a unique cycle of songs, half in this world, half in another.