Name: Larkin GrimmFrom: No Fixed Address
Story: Born into a cult, this wandering warbler puts the freak in freak-folk
Sound: Perverse carnival-sideshow finger-pickin' hysteria
When it arrived late in 2008, Larkin Grimm's third album, Parplar, was but a blip on the underground radar. Yet, in the months since, this rather strange set has been slowly growing a cult following, championed by numerous publications and, notably, by the Mountain Goats' verbose frontman John Darnielle.
A set of bizarre, absurdist folksongs, Parplar is an album that swings wildly between stark beauty and unexpected comedy; showcasing Grimm's folkie warble, lyrical grotesquerie ("the microcosmic spiralled eggs inside my uterus/are sparkling and bursting with the greenest yellow pus"), and fingerpicking skill. Released by Michael Gira's Young God Records, Parplar has been compared to the early recordings of Young God's star freak-folk signing, Devendra Banhart.
Grimm arrives blessed with an unbelievable back-story. The 26-year-old was born into the religious cult The Holy Order of MANS, was raised in the Blue Ridge Mountains, traveled through Alaska, Thailand, and Guatemala, and eventually settled, at, um, Yale. After spending a stint in Dave Longstreth's almighty Dirty Projectors project, Grimm started fashioning her own music; freeform acoustic songs which showcased her voice. After releasing two far more stripped-down, almost pretty records, 2005's Harpoon and 2006's The Last Tree, Grimm started working with Gira, and, encouraged by the old Swans renegade, pushed her music further into the bizarre.
The resulting record shows an artist who can even make traditional odes her own: her multi-layered, almost painful-sounding take on "Fall On My Knees" so loaded with harmonica and mouth-harp and fiddle that it creates a claustrophobic, oppressive feeling. Whereas many of the new-millennium folk starlets are content with an easy-to-please, acoustic sweetness, Grimm is, in contrast, an artist not for the faint-hearted.
- Watch: Larkin Grimm "The Last Tree"
- Compare Prices: Larkin Grimm, Parplar
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