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• July 22, 2008
• Reviews

07/23/08

Grouper—Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill

The Kiss Off—Brace This new Brooklyn band lists Echo and the Bunnymen and David Bowie among their influences and you can tell. There's plenty of drama and paranoia in the vocals and swelling keyboards to set this band apart from a host of other new wave revivalists. But underneath all of that, they're a tough New York rock band with a tight, fully realized sound.

Air France—No Way Down Air France is a band from Gothenburg, Sweden, who make massive-sounding summer soundscapes. Their music has been lumped in with the balearic disco sound (which is based on the blissful dance music that emerged in the '80s on the party island of Ibiza). While it's true you can dance to this, and it is indeed blissful, there is much more going on here than mere dance revivalism. The entire EP sounds like the soundtrack to a movie and just listening to the record you can almost see it (we'll give you a hint: it takes place on a beach).

Grouper—Dragging a Dead Deer Up A Hill There are many things that we think about when we listen to Grouper, the pseudonym of Portland, Oregon's Liz Harris, but we definitely don't think about dragging a dead deer up a hill. More likely we think about listening to a siren's song while underwater or dreaming about lovely folk songs. More often than not, Grouper plays music accompanied by only piano or guitar but the album is recorded so that it feels like you could swim through the guitar strums and close harmonies. We suggest listening to this at 3 a.m. as you drift pleasantly into R.E.M state.

There are many things that we think about when we listen to Grouper, the pseudonym of Portland, Oregon's Liz Harris, but we definitely don't think about dragging a dead deer up a hill...