Grid of Points is the eleventh studio album by the American musician Liz Harris under the stage name Grouper. It was released in the United States on April 27, 2018, by Kranky.
Recording.
In 2014, Liz Harris had a residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming. While there, a cold snap kept her indoors and she began to write and record the songs that became "Grid of Points". The writing period lasted a week and a half before she developed a fever and stopped. Describing the process, Harris said, "Though brief, it is complete. The intimacy and abbreviation of this music allude to an essence that the songs lyrics speak more directly of. The space left after matter has departed, a stage after the characters have gone, the hollow of some central column, missing."
The short length of the album initially worried the label, which thought that listeners would feel short-changed. However, Harris refused to add more songs, telling the label, "This is the complete idea. It just happens to be 22 minutes."
The song "Parking Lot" was inspired by a scene from the film "Zabriskie Point" depicting the California desert, which aligned with Harris' own impression. "Driving" was inspired by an image of tree-tunnels, people driving to a funeral and Harris' own family, "trying to find a way through it, without thinking it has to be excavated or turned into something positive".
Release.
"Grid of Points" was announced on March 8, 2018. Accompanying the announcement, the track "Parking Lot" was released. "Parking Lot" was named one of NPR's "Songs We Love" and "Pitchfork" awarded it their "Best New Track" status. A second pre-release track, "Driving", was issued on April 3.
Critical reception.
The aggregate review site "Metacritic" assigns an average score of 80 out of 100 to the album based on 21 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
Writing for "Drowned in Sound", Benjamin Bland described "Grid of Points" as "even more austere than its predecessor" and "astonishingly beautiful and astonishingly, painfully real". Tom Beedham of "Exclaim!" wrote that "with the spare concrete signifiers and evocative open spaces she provides on "Grid of Points", she's crafted a map for the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences".
Despite overall praise, reviewers were mixed on whether the length was a positive or negative. Heather Phares of "AllMusic" praised Harris for sticking with her initial recordings, writing, "Wisely, Harris didn't try to inflate it into something more elaborate." Steven Johnson of "MusicOMH" was more critical, arguing that "the relative brevity and sparseness of the album … won't see "Grid Of Points" talked of in the same elevated way as some of her other work".
"Grid of Points" was ranked the 40th best release of the year in "The Wire" magazine's annual critics' poll.
References.
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