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Mirrorring, "Foreign Body"
Start to finish, Mirrorring's debut is submerged in a hazy, blurred production aesthetic. This is not only unsurprising, it's exactly what I would have predicted from this collaboration between Liz Harris (of Grouper) and Jesy Fortino (of Tiny Vipers) before hearing a single reverbed note. Fortunately, Liz Harris' age-old trick is a good one, and Fortino's contributions are key, making Foreign Body more than the sum of its contributors' parts.
Opening track "Fell Sound" takes an immediate swan-dive into murky, immersive drone textures that are recognizable as Liz Harris' work to anyone lucky enough to snag vinyl-only pressings of last year's mighty A I A: Dream Loss and Alien Observer records. As on each of Grouper's records, the reverbed-to-high-heavens production is as much an intended focal point as Harris' cloudy vocals and muffled guitar strumming. What keeps "Fell Sound" (and the whole album, really) from seeming like A I A leftovers is the collaborative element shining through: Jesy Fortino's guitar counterpoint cuts through the fog like the distant headlights of an oncoming car. The song is quite evocative and pretty, if a predictable way to kick things off.
As the album progresses, Fortino's contributions come to light in her singing, which is warmer and more welcoming (and intelligible) than Harris' ghostly shards of voice. "Cliff" and "Mine" both layer Fortino's voice on top of a thick blanket of sound, with Harris' guitar playing smeared and blurred unto infinity, as if beamed in from oceanic depths under cover of night. As an aesthetic foil, Fortino solemnly finger-picks her acoustic guitar, letting small clusters of notes waft from the immersive drone. It's gorgeous stuff, to be sure, and sounds best played at high volume or on headphones, when the sounds are able to wash over my ears like a rising tide. As background music, it warms up a room admirably, with nothing abrasive or unexpected cutting through and spoiling the mood.
Room for improvement lies in the fact that both of these ladies know how to write a killer tune, and Foreign Body could use a couple more songs as opposed to sounds. Fortino's made a career out of melancholy vocal-and-guitar solo work on her two Sub Pop albums, and Harris' lovely song-cycle on Dragging a Dead Deer up a Hill shows that she can write memorable songs when she puts her mind to it ("Heavy Water/I'd Rather Be Sleeping"), as opposed to focusing strictly on atmosphere. Bits of Fortino's songwriting prowess sneak into Mirrorring tracks like "Silent from Above," which pairs the album's most evocative melody with Harris' soft backing vocals and a barely-there drone that evokes Grouper's most restrained work. "Silent from Above" stands as Foreign Body's best song, and the one melody I can clearly recall (i.e., hum to myself) after spending a couple weeks with the album.
Foreign Body was put to tape during a recording session in Portland, Oregon. It sounds cozy and personal, and it's obvious Fortino and Harris were in the same room together, feeding off each other's energy (and/or melancholy) in real time, as opposed to swapping MP3 files. Much of the album also sounds improvised, like Harris kicked off each piece by building guitar loops into a layered drone (as anyone who has seen her play live can attest) and providing space for Fortino to weave in acoustic guitar lines accordingly. In a brief interview last month, Fortino talked about her experience making the album: "We recorded most of the songs together live. [...] Most records I've done on my own are very straightforward, just a room mic and me singing and playing acoustic. So it was fun trying to go with Liz in an abstract direction."
In that same interview, Harris added color on the creative process and the pair's aesthetic differences: "We end up balancing each other out because of the way we're bringing this resonance out in our tones or sounds. She has a stronger voice than I do, and plays a brighter acoustic guitar, and picks out points rather than making washes of sounds. I tend to stay quieter and make these more blanket-y, low-end things." She's right, and as a midway point between Harris and Fortino's distinct, previously defined sounds, Foreign Body is a success. Most of what it leaves to be desired as a song cycle, it makes up on the strength of its immersive palette of sounds, as well as its merging of two visions into a cohesive whole.
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