Grouper has released a new song and accompanying video, ‘Ode To The Blue’.
The track is the second to be shared from Liz Harris’ forthcoming album, Shade, which was announced in July, alongside the unveiling of lead track ‘Unclean Mind’. You can watch a video for ‘Ode To The Blue’ above.
Speaking about the video, director Dicky Bahto says: "Liz [Harris] sent me a love song in the middle of the worst part of the pandemic in Los Angeles to think about making a film for. I was depressed and scared and felt incapable of thinking. She mentioned picturing people kissing; and ‘maybe something in a graveyard’. I wanted to see my friends. I wanted to feel intimacy again. I thought: What if the film is just people making out in graveyards?
"In Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights, I found myself surrounded by graves for people who, like my own grandparents, had survived the Armenian and Assyrian genocide a little over a hundred years ago. After a year of fear over the pandemic, growing support for right-wing authoritarianism, and the escalating climate crisis — with a popular narrative that we’re living through the end of the world — I needed the reminder that the end of the world is always happening somewhere, and even if we don’t survive the end of our world, we might as well enjoy the pleasures of love. Watching my friends kiss was a hot, fresh breath direct from their mouths that made me feel a joy I hadn’t experienced in far too long."
Due out next month, Shade‘s nine tracks are said to span the last 15 years. Harris characterises the album as being "about respite, and the coast, poetically and lyrically," a press release shared alongside the album’s July announcement explained.
Kranky will release Shade on October 22, 2021.
