''Ruins'' is the tenth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

by American musician Liz Harris under the stage name

Grouper Groupers are a diverse group of marine ray-finned fish in the family Epinephelidae, in the order Perciformes. Groupers were long considered a subfamily of the seabasses in Serranidae, but are now treated as distinct. Not all members of this f ...

. It was released in the United States on October 31, 2014 on Kranky.

Recording

In a statement accompanying the announcement of the album's release, Liz Harris described its recording process: While in Portugal, where she stayed in a house owned by the aunt of music director Sérgio Hydalgo, Harris listened to records by Carlos Paredes,

Nina Simone Nina Simone ( ; born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was an American singer, pianist, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and po ...

and

Leonard Cohen Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian songwriter, singer, poet, and novelist. Themes commonly explored throughout his work include faith and mortality, isolation and depression, betrayal and redemption, soc ...

. Regarding "Call Across Rooms", Harris stated that "the song is on one level very plain and literal, about a letter I wrote for someone I loved and could not get along with. On a more subconscious, poetic level, it is a letter to myself, as aspiration to love better." The "microwave beep" occurs at the end of "Labyrinth".

Release

On August 14, 2014, Harris announced the album's title. Prior to the album's October 31 release, the tracks "Call Across Rooms" and "Holding" were released, both of which were awarded ''

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

''s "Best New Track" status.

Critical reception

Upon its release, ''Ruins'' received critical acclaim. At

Metacritic Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...

, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album holds an

average In colloquial, ordinary language, an average is a single number or value that best represents a set of data. The type of average taken as most typically representative of a list of numbers is the arithmetic mean the sum of the numbers divided by ...

score of 80, indicating "generally favorable reviews", based on 19 reviews. Philip Sherburne of ''

'' awarded ''Ruins'' the site's "Best New Music" title and dubbed it "achingly beautiful and, given the intensely private nature of most of Grouper's work... almost unnervingly direct." ''Ruins'' was later named the fifth best album of 2014 on ''Pitchfork''. The album also placed 13th in ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime fiction, crime Drama (film and television), drama television series created and primarily written by the American author and former police reporter David Simon for the cable network HBO. The series premiered o ...

''s annual critics' poll. In 2018, ''Pitchfork'' ranked ''Ruins'' at number 18 on its list of the 30 best

dream pop Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such ...

albums.

Track listing

References

{{Authority control 2014 albums Grouper (musician) albums Kranky (record label) albums