The Man Who Died in His Boat

In a press release, Harris explained the title The Man Who Died in His Boat, which refers to an incident on Agate Beach in Bolinas, California:^[3]

When I was a teenager the wreckage of a sailboat washed up on the shore of Agate Beach. The remains of the vessel weren't removed for several days. I walked down with my father to peer inside the boat cabin. Maps, coffee cups and clothing were strewn around inside. I remember looking only briefly, wilted by the feeling that I was violating some remnant of this man's presence by witnessing the evidence of its failure. Later I read a story about him in the paper. It was impossible to know what had happened.^[4]

Harris may be referring to an August 1998 incident in which the intact sailboat of Dr. William Groppe (1947–1998), a psychiatrist and sailor from Visalia, California, was found abandoned off the shore of Agate Beach, along with two weeks worth of provisions and his equipment still in working order. Groppe had been en route to visit his girlfriend in Hawaii; he was declared dead in absentia in October 1998.^[5][6]

Speaking of the main protagonist implied in the title of the album, Drowned in Sound columnist Tim Peyton writes: "The mysterious pathos of this incident suits Grouper well. As Harris explains, 'the boat never crashed or capsized... (it) just slipped off somehow. And the boat, like a riderless horse, eventually came back home.' This haunting return of an unmanned vessel is spooky in a similar way to Harris's ethereal, multi tracked vocals."^[2]

The aggregate review site Metacritic assigns an average score of 81 out of 100 to The Man Who Died in His Boat based on 17 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[8]

The song "Vital" was chosen as "Best New Track" by Pitchfork on December 20, 2012,^[17] and the site later placed it at number 88 on their list of the Top 100 Tracks of 2013.^[18]