Harris reflects on its origins in the abstract drone of her 2005 debut Way Their Crept. \u201cI thought there was some really dark part of me, and I was trying to understand it and incorporate it,\u201d she says now. She is uneasy being the face of her music and generally keeps herself at arm\u2019s length from the industry. \u201cI\u2019ve always been backing away from that,\u201d she says, preferring to remind herself before shows \u201cthat we\u2019re all in the room together\u201d.<\/p>\n
Helen \u2026 l-r Jed Bindeman, Scott Simmons, Liz Harris. Photograph: Colin Smith<\/p>\n
When Harris and I meet at her Williamsburg hotel prior to the show, she\u2019s wearing a T-shirt that says \u201cBirth Ends in Death\u201d, merch from her friend and occasional collaborator, the ambient musician Jefre Cantu-Ledesma. In addition to these milestone Grouper shows \u2013 coming five years after her last album, Shade \u2013 we\u2019re speaking in light of the second record by Helen, the dream-pop trio in which she sings and plays guitar alongside drummer Jed Bindeman, who runs Portland shop Little Axe Records, and bassist Scott Simmons, also of lo-fi band the Lavender Flu. Their new album, Linda\u2019s Head, like their 2015 debut The Original Faces, evokes scrappy Flying Nun indie-pop remade in their own stark Pacific Northwest image. But there\u2019s a striking clarity and weight to the new one. If Grouper is the sound of a woman singing to herself, on Linda\u2019s Head, she sings out.<\/p>\n
Helen\u2019s appeal, for Harris, is in part its collectivity. \u201cI get to relax more in Helen,\u201d she says. \u201cIt feels as if I get to show a side of myself that I\u2019ve always had, but that doesn\u2019t get to show through Grouper, which is that I like having fun and I like my friends. I\u2019m not just in the corner crying,\u201d she says with a hearty laugh. Helen has a \u201cbright energy\u201d, she says, but, as with Grouper, a darkness gently haunts the music and Harris\u2019s beguiling layered harmonies. The band\u2019s name references Washington\u2019s Mount St Helen, the site of a deadly volcanic eruption shortly before Harris was born in 1980, and it also alludes to a childhood spectre. \u201cWhen I was a total loner social reject in junior high, I was trying to talk to ghosts all the time,\u201d says Harris. \u201cI thought I was talking to a ghost named Helen that lived in my house.\u201d<\/p>\n
The songs consider what Harris calls \u201cecstatic nihilism\u201d in a brutal world. \u201cWe\u2019re all going through this time where things are really fucked up \u2013 it\u2019s the war on Gaza and straight-up fascism in this country,\u201d she says of the US. \u201cThere\u2019s this urge to escape, but at the same time, a very pressing urge to be present and have community.\u201d She hears both on Linda\u2019s Head, and says the collaborative process of making the music lifted her spirits during a time when she was navigating medical difficulties. \u201cJed would be like, \u2018Come on, let\u2019s practise,\u2019 and I\u2019d drag my feet there. I\u2019d always leave thinking, \u2018Thank God I did that.\u2019 It was really restorative.\u201d<\/p>\n
In conversation, Harris is gracious and direct \u2013 she sounds as comfortable discussing her art, process and many tattoos as she does politics and music-industry corruption \u2013 which may surprise those who know her through her often cryptic music. Touring and performing like this is daunting for her, but she\u2019s enjoying it. She says she\u2019s been feeling more \u201cintegrated\u201d lately, which she hears in Helen.<\/p>\n
A pair of songs on Linda\u2019s Head, Dead Shark and Dead Shark II (alternate versions of the same tune), are disarmingly vibrant for Harris, despite their morbid origins. They were inspired by an actual shark Harris saw one day at the coast when she was feeling especially low. She observed its large, lifeless body floating by. \u201cIt distracted me from my own shit, and took me out of my headspace, this poor creature,\u201d she says. \u201cThe song is about connecting and the process of feeling bad and going out into nature and letting it change you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Helen: Dead Shark II \u2013 video<\/p>\n
The macabre titles recall Harris\u2019s 2008 breakthrough, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, when she pivoted from abstract noise to acoustic, subtle art songs. That earlier title derived from a core childhood memory: Harris encountered a dead deer in the woods with a friend who dared her to hoist it up a hill. It incited a realisation about her agency in the world, and later inspired a title about the process of unburdening yourself of the past.<\/p>\n
When she was two years old, Harris\u2019s parents were among the many seeking structure after the chaos of post-hippy late-60s San Francisco. The family moved from nearby Bolinas, where her father built houses with back-to-the-lander Lloyd Kahn, to a Fourth Way commune in Sonoma County. They joined a spiritual group \u2013 called the Group \u2013 where kids defiantly referred to the initiated as \u201cgroupers\u201d. Harris still has friends from then: \u201cThere was a grouper at the show last night.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m pretty happy at the place I\u2019ve landed\u2019 \u2026 Liz Harris Photograph: Kait De Angelis<\/p>\n
The adults enacted the Group\u2019s dogma on to children who were shuffled between households. Theoretically, they followed the teachings of famed mystic Gurdjieff. Harris was told that they were real people, but most of the world was asleep. \u201cIt was so confusing, and actually just instilled terror in me,\u201d she says. \u201cIt made me terrified of other people, but also terrified of, how do I make sure that I stay real? I can\u2019t become one of the sleepers.\u201d I ask if this affected 2008\u2019s Heavy Water\/I\u2019d Rather Be Sleeping, still her signature song, but she says that was about a depressive period and retreating into her \u201cvery active dream world\u201d.<\/p>\n
Making music in her 20s was a way to begin processing it all. \u201cI would still call it a cult,\u201d she says of the Group, \u201cand what happened was exploitative. But it\u2019s not holding my focus in the way that it used to. There were enlightening things and shitty things \u2013 all of it led to where I\u2019m at now. I still have my existential crises, but I\u2019m pretty happy at the place I\u2019ve landed.\u201d<\/p>\n
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