Grouper: Ruins [KRANKY]

Why you'll love it

Kranky's pressing comes in a jacket printed on uncoated stock with a sticker included. Pitchfork gave Ruins Best New Music and named it the fifth best album of 2014, and The Wire's critics' poll placed it 13th.

This edition

• Jacket printed on uncoated stock
• Sticker included

About the album

Some records are made in studios; Ruins was made on a walk. In 2011 Liz Harris spent a residency in Aljezur, Portugal, set up by Galeria Zé dos Bois, and each day she hiked several miles to the beach along a path that wound through the remains of old estates and a small village. The album, she said, is a nod to that daily walk.

She recorded it very simply, with a portable 4-track, a Sony stereo mic and an upright piano, and left the songs the way they came. "Call Across Rooms" and "Holding" both earned Pitchfork's Best New Track, the first a letter to someone she loved and, on another level, to herself. "Clearing," "Lighthouse" and "Holofernes" hang in the air like fog over water, and the closing "Made of Air" was recorded years earlier at her mother's house in Petaluma. While she was there, she listened to Carlos Paredes, Nina Simone and Leonard Cohen, and you can hear their quiet in it.

Pitchfork later ranked it among the 30 best dream pop albums. A storm knocked the power out during the sessions, and the microwave's beep as it came back on is still there at the end of "Labyrinth"; few albums credit their kitchen appliances so honestly.

Also at Kops: more Grouper on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Kranky (cat# KRANK189), the 2014 album.