A few pieces Hue feel like love songs This is certainly true of “Unclean Mind”, with its silent and bare appeals. The repetitive guitar movements of “The way her hair falls,” combined with the frequently appearing word “pretty,” make her feel like she's making a tender and intimate gesture, like braiding a lover's hair. But Hue seems equally interested in Harris's closeness to nature. On “Kelso (Blue sky),” we hear an owl hooting in the distance (Harris likes peaceful, non-human duet partners; remember the microwave in “Labyrinth” from Ruins). “Followed the ocean” feels buffeted by the elements, like a wanderer on a spiritual quest. And the omnipresent room tone in the quieter passages alerts us to the presence of the vastness of the surrounding universe, just on the other side of the walls.
Harris recorded these tracks over the past 15 years, in the Bay Area and Oregon. The easy assumption is that the more obscure songs are older and the newer songs represent the conclusion of the trend towards more colorless production in Ruins and of 2018 Grid of points. But it's hard to be sure, and on “Ode to the blue,” her voice sounds enough like Vashti Bunyan's to make me wonder if it wasn't recorded closer to 2006, when Bunyan's influence was more pervasive in indie rock . Either way, the possibility of a 15-year jump as “Followed the ocean” abruptly transitions into “Unclean mind” is almost as disorienting as the famous millions of years match cut in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Starling albums usually pick a mood and stick with it, but the fusion of the two poles of Harris' sound gives Hue a distinct tenor in her discography. This push-pull structure accounts for much of what makes the record compelling, but it also makes it harder to get lost in than some of her albums. Major key “Kelso” feels like a very decisive ending so soon after “Basement Mix” takes us into the woods on a low-distortion path. And there are some moments where they try too hard for a “familiar” feel, like when a joke dialogue interrupts the end of “Disordered Minds” or the shot of “The way her hair falls” where it shuffles and starts over. But he had Hue following a more disciplined arc, it can lose the sense of floating freely through time and memory, playing some moments with stunning clarity and burying others in fog.
A more stripped-down Grouper isn't necessarily more interesting or emotionally compelling, but it's hard to think of many musicians better at transforming pop and folk structures into abstract, haunting settings, and that power hasn't diminished. Hue. The chain reaction these nine songs create produces enough fog and smoke to keep the spell going – and to keep whatever secret it's trying to tell us just on the other side of the speakers.
(Pitchfork earns a commission from purchases made through affiliate links on our site.)
Catch up every Saturday with 10 of our best reviewed albums of the week. Sign up for the 10 to Hear newsletter here.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/grouper-shade/
