The good folks down at Holocene put together an awesome Haiti Benefit show yesterday that rivaled other efforts across town. With all of the money from the $10 tickets and bar profits going to Mercy Corps, the event, entitled “L’Union Fair La Force”, certainly generated thousands of dollars for a good cause. And hey, it didn’t hurt that the attendees got their money’s worthy from a bill including local-studs Grouper and Pyramiddd (formerly known as the less eloquent Starfucker).
I only caught the Grouper set because, well, I knew that all the other acts would pale in comparison to her performance (plus I had some Wire to watch). Like always, Liz Harris puts on a show not meant for musical entertaining but spiritual awakening. With cassettes of pre-made eerie sounds specifically designed for each song, Harris records, loops, and layers guitar and vocals lines and places them on top of the tapes’ creepy noises — kind of like a more haunting Imogen Heap.
To be honest, I don’t know how Harris draws enough courage to go up on stage for live performances. Her music isn’t particularly conducive to casual listening, requiring complete silence from the audience in order to fully experience it. In a town where casual listening is the norm and crowd chatter drowns out even popular acts, if I was Harris I would pull a Sally Shapiro and just let the records speak for themselves and stay away from the stage whenever possible. Thankfully for us true fans, she braved the inevitable disruptions and stage fright associated with solo performing and gave us a gift with her music while helping the people of Haiti at the same time.
Here is “Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping”, one of my favorite tracks from her hit album Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill that she unfortunately didn’t perform last night, and a new track entitled “Hold the Way” off of her new split EP with Roy Montgomery which she did play:
Grouper // Heavy Water/I’d Rather Be Sleeping
Tags: Grouper, Haiti Benefit, Holocene, Live, mp3, Pyramiddd