Grouper, The Issue Project Room, Brooklyn

The self-proclaimed goal of the Issue Project Room is to create a space for experimental and avant-garde performance à la the ‘80s downtown scene. The mission statement of this performance space, housed in the Old Can Factory near the Gowanus Canal, is appropriate in content if not presentation.

By securing acts such as Grouper the space certifies its indie cred. As a band with a sound that can be described both as gossamer and murky, bright and hazy, Grouper’s music may not be for everyone. This didn’t stop Liz Harris, though, from reaching top ten lists with her last full-length effort, 2008’s ‘Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill’. Yet Issue Project Room, perhaps, asked her to perform an older less accessible album in its entirety, 2005’s ‘Way Their Crept’.

The Room itself seems to walk the line inhabited by much of modern day Brooklyn, a mix of DIY aesthetic paired with class and a willingness to work within established channels (IPR is a 501c3, not squatted loft space). In an old brick building, lodged between two parking lots, a Staples, and a warehouse (and within the vicinity of a coffin manufacturer—or a building that purports to be), the room itself is a large barnlike construction, with lacquered plywood floors and state of the art speakers hung from the ceiling like potted plants designed by Bose.

Looking more bike messenger than chanteuse, Ms. Harris, better known as Grouper, stepped nimbly through a hundred or so seated Brooklynites to reach the performance area. With no fanfare to speak of, she took her seat behind a Wurlitzer organ fed through an extensive effects kit. As the reverberating thrum that would rumble beneath her entire performance began to fill the hall, Harris bent down and began a projection mimicking fireflies in the dark on a summer’s night.

Though Grouper’s music often favors atmosphere over hooks or entirely recognizable vocals, there is an inherent humanity to her sound that seems best characterized by our capacity to share a feeling of longing and feel isolated while in the midst of a group. The sound Grouper creates is unique, a strange blend of simple instrumentation and complexly layered effects. Even at her most spare (voice and organ with dialed down reverb) feedback sounds like part of her music, an addition instead of obfuscation.

There is a quality to Grouper’s soundscape very much akin to Lamont Young’s Dream House, but instead of the harsh roar of that project, Grouper’s woven textures and rolling drones have an almost natural quality. The word “water” appears in many of her songs, and there is certainly something liquid to her pieces.

This is not to say that Harris relies purely on the pleasant. Twenty minutes into her set, Grouper introduced a sound similar to the one achieved by flipping back and forth between a clear TV channel and static. Additionally, it would not be unwise to wonder if some of her sounds were in fact influenced by air raid sirens of the Great War variety.

Throughout the performance Harris’s projectors mimicked her sound, at times resembling flames, at times glow sticks, at times cats’ eyes, and at times, the aforementioned fireflies. The accompaniment of imagery highlighted the ability of Grouper’s music to balance between the light and the dark. Adorning this audible mobile were the spooky strains of Harris’s voice, a coo with nothing coquettish about it.