Grouper

Liz Harris’ mission as Grouper has always been to investigate the possibility of a simpler life without challenges. The lo-fi songwriter and audio collagist (born in 1980 and raised in Oregon) questions the difference between electronic and acoustic instrumentation, found and intentional sounds, and the way that love can blind some people to the truth. She broke through with 2008’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, featuring the standout cut “Heavy Water / I’d Rather Be Sleeping,” which captures powerful, cathartic emotions with little more than an acoustic guitar and looping, enchanting lines about the necessity of losing control in order to feel true love. On 2011’s A I A: Alien Observer, she turns barely-there instrumentation into powerful hooks. Harris treats each Grouper album as its own world, like 2018’s Grid of Points, which is an exercise in piano and voice. Whatever her tools, though, Harris manages to create music at its most elemental: Hers is stripped down to its most necessary components, demonstrating that all too often, noise is only used to distract.