Helen — Liz Harris’s shoegaze-leaning collaboration with Portland rhythm players Jed Bindemann and Scott Simmons — returns after a decade with Linda’s Head, due October 2, 2026 on Kranky. Willamette Week’s October 1 feature marks the first full album from the Grouper-adjacent project since 2015’s The Original Faces, and positions the new set as leaner and more stripped-down than the stormier debut.
Harris, long associated with foggy ambient-folk under the Grouper name, uses Helen to push her hooks against a rock rhythm section. Linda’s Head packs 10 songs into about 32 minutes, mixing brief pop sketches such as the one-minute opener “Faraway” with longer ambient stretches including the six-minute “Darkblue,” “Dead Shark I,” and the eight-minute bass-driven closer “Canyon.” Bindemann and Simmons still supply heft, but the record stays solitary rather than communal.
Harris has teased that the title may nod to a fictional Oregon Coast landform, part of a larger habit of cryptic names across her catalog. As with much of her work, lyric sheets are scarce, leaving listeners to decode intimacy from haze. Digital and vinyl editions are listed via Kranky and grouper.bandcamp.com as the rainy-season release approaches.
Image: Helen — Colin Smith / Willamette Week — https://www.wweek.com/music/2026/10/01/grouper-side-project-helen-is-back-after-10-years/