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Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill
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Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill Image
Metascore
80

Generally favorable reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
8.4

Universal acclaim- based on 24 Ratings

  • Summary: The third album for the Portland, Oregon-based indie pop singer Liz Harris.

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 7
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 7
  3. Negative: 0 out of 7
  1. Sputnikmusic
    90
    More than just a pretty acoustic record, Harris, through Grouper, has created a startlingly vivid and brooding shoegaze gem that works in spite of its length and first impressions.
  2. Drowned In Sound
    90
    Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill, can simultaneously be one of the most delicate, affecting albums of the year, and, yet, at the same time have such a strange, menacing name.
  3. Pitchfork
    82
    Dead Deer is druggy and sexy and arty and pretty, but never pretentious.
  4. Mojo
    80
    A psych-folk bent for harmonic discord and atmospheric dread finds something forever sinister lodged at the album's heart: the kind of beauty that makes sailors run aground. [Dec 2008, p.102]
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  5. Dusted Magazine
    80
    Despite all these potential distractions, Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill remains, quite simply, a beautiful album, possibly because. Harris feels so comfortable in her own skin.
  6. cokemachineglow
    71
    I can’t help but feel that this album wants to have it several ways, but the net result of following all those paths means it plays out only one way.
  7. PopMatters
    60
    This Liz, however, can still produce a satisfying forty-five minutes or so of 4AD-styled mysterious, drifting amorphia (complete with acoustic guitars and pretty vocals), and that’s rare enough that Grouper are worth watching.

User Reviews

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Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 2
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 2
  3. Negative: 0 out of 2
  1. Vampire25
    Apr 26, 2013
    8
    Grouper craft a compelling listen with Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. From the first track, the vocals and the minimalist approach to theirGrouper craft a compelling listen with Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill. From the first track, the vocals and the minimalist approach to their sound are haunting. The production I thought was fantastic for being an independent record. The way the songs lap onto each other as if it is still the same song was really unique.

    Grouper managed to not only make a great record, but blow me away in the process.    … Collapse
  2. Ricko
    Jul 9, 2020
    8
    This is otherworldly and while it is influenced by shoegaze, coming in 2008 it's a record that was miles ahead of the dream/lo fi wave thatThis is otherworldly and while it is influenced by shoegaze, coming in 2008 it's a record that was miles ahead of the dream/lo fi wave that came out of the states in the years that followed. At the records core is a voice and acoustic guitar but it is far removed from a singer songwriter album. Swamped in echo and swirling reverb with some ambient synths mixed in the background, this is the music you hear when your lost in a dream or when your mind is altered so your surroundings are unfamiliar. This album hits the nervous system in a way that is chemical. Be warned, it takes quite a few listens to get into as initially it all blended into one for me but as I revisited the layers revealed themselves. Great stuff.… Expand

Awards & Rankings

76
#76 Best Album of 2008