Ruins

Ruins was made during a 2011 residency in Aljezur, on the Portuguese coast, arranged by the Lisbon gallery Zé dos Bois. Harris asked only for a piano. Every day she hiked several miles to the beach on a path through the ruins of old estates and a small village, and the songs simply arrived. She recorded them plainly, without effects, on a portable four-track and a Sony stereo microphone; frogs croak in the background and a microwave beeps where the power went out in a storm. The last track, Made of Air, was recorded at her mother's house in Petaluma in 2004. Her own note calls the album a document, a nod to that daily walk, about failed structures and living in the remains of love.

Pitchfork gave it Best New Music, calling it achingly beautiful and almost unnervingly direct, and placed it fifth among the albums of 2014. Crack heard Debussy and Joe Hisaishi's Spirited Away score in Lighthouse.