Grouper – “Wide ” – [Free Porcupine Society]

Take this one to the cloud bank, and never touch ground again.
Liz Harris is Grouper, working out the Bay Area and delivering
hyper-ethereal sounds. Her soft voice is a beautiful, blurry
instrument, nested in pools of reverb-drench. When saints
were drowned for their beliefs, this is the sound of the sky
watching. Guitar gets flicked and ticked on some cuts, like
“They Moved Everything” and “Little Boat/Bone Dance.” On
“Giving It To You” a piano dances a little drone waltz, again
while Harris mumble musings play cats-in-the-cradle with your
ears. “Black Blood” oozes on all voice, but as resplendent
and multi-voiced as Sybil. Schizophrenia should be this
hypnotizing. The title cut concludes the album as if a
Flying Saucer Attack had landed in a rivulet; an amorphous
psych melody is channelled and chanted through mossy brook.
Exceptional drift release, even better than her stellar
“Way Their Crept.” The highest cloud in the sky.

-Thurston Hunger