Shade

Songs gathered over fifteen years, mostly voice and acoustic guitar: an album, Harris said, about respite and the coast.
Grouper, 2021

Released
22 October 2021
Recorded
2008-2021
Studio
Mount Tamalpais, Portland and Astoria
Label
Kranky
Producer
Liz Harris
Length
34:59

Play on hypersongs

Shade collects songs recorded between 2008 and 2021: some on Mount Tamalpais during a self-made residency, some long ago in Portland, and the rest in recent sessions in Astoria. The label text describes it as an album about respite and the coast, and about loss, flaws, hiding places and love. Most of it is voice and fingerpicked guitar, closer and plainer than her earlier records, though Allison Herlihy plays drums on Disordered Minds.

Pitchfork gave it Best New Music, writing that few musicians are better at turning pop and folk structures into abstract, haunted spaces. The Washington Post named it the second-best album of 2021.

Track listing

  1. Followed the Ocean2:54
  2. Unclean Mind3:51
  3. Ode to the Blue2:53
  4. Pale Interior3:51
  5. Disordered Minds4:34
  6. The Way Her Hair Falls2:35
  7. Promise2:49
  8. Basement Mix5:17
  9. Kelso (Blue Sky)6:15

More from Grouper

Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill (2008), A I A: Alien Observer (2011), Ruins (2014)

Sources

  1. Shade (Grouper album), Wikipedia
  2. Grouper, Shade, Pitchfork (2021-10-26)
  3. Shade (KRANK233), Forced Exposure