Song Of The Day 3: Grouper: Call Across Rooms

Those of us who find ourselves in low moods a lot of the time often find comfort in sad songs. We wallow until there's no more sorrow to be let loose, and we can pick ourselves up again. Very often there's particular songs that get put on repeat, a feedback loop of sadness, a downward spiral. For me, Grouper's song Call Across Rooms, off her 2014 album Ruins is the one song among the many songs fitting that description that's under the microscope today. It's one of only a few songs that completely broke me emotionally upon first listen.

The day after first listening to it, I ended up in hospital for a suicide attempt. I was afraid of it for a little bit afterwards, but I tried listening to tricot in the ambulance n I haven't gone off that band at all, so I return to Call Across Rooms at my lowest points.

The song is essentially recorded in one take, Liz Harris singing over sad piano, a faint air of feedback in the air. I've heard music critics refer to White Guy With Acoustic Guitar having a female counterpart in White Girl At Piano, in this case, it's very much true in how potent the form can be at its very best. There's an understated sadness to the words Liz sings, but a crushing sadness behind those words, a tale of unfulfillment, a love affair gone sour, or perhaps never got off the ground in the first place.
"I have a present to give you, when we finally figure it out, funny that we still haven't figured it out, and we still turn in circles". Unimpressive words when presented in plain form like this article, but with that piano and Liz Harris's beautiful, achingly sad voice, they become something transcendant. There's longing, resignation to the futility of the situation, the highs and lows of the affair, all within only three minutes, not even using the typical framework of verse-chorus-verse as a trellis to grow this particular musical flower on.

I'm still not entirely sure how this song came into my life, my malaise at the time wasn't something that could be succinctly summed up with some clever lyrics in a song. The situation in the lyrics wasn't even really applicable to me, it was an odd case of the sounds themselves tearing at my heartstrings. I had pretty much put the album on after seeing it mentioned a few times in a Facebook group, and when this song came on, it was just a solid punch to the stomach. Give it a listen, it might be the same punch to the gut for you, and hopefully your day after won't be the same as mine was.

Sometimes...art hurts. I've listened to the collaboration albums between grindcore bands and harsh noise artists, I've seen some quite gory and quite grim films in my time, yet none of them have hurt quite like this song. Yet, in a twisted way, it's one of my all time favourite pieces of music. Art's funny like that I guess.