PRESS
Larkin Grimm—Parplar CD Review
New Times - San Luis Obispo, Ca. | Glen Starkey
she morphs “old timey†with her eccentric nature, assembling something truly her own
http://www.newtimes-slo.com/music/1291/livin-and-learnin-on-laurel-lane-/
Arriving on the same Young God label that introduced Devendra Banhart’s
shaman-influenced folk into greater light, Larkin Grimm has a biography that
travels a similar arc. Born in the Appalachians to a commune environment of
multiple hippie parents, she eventually landed at Yale only to freak out at
its homogeneity, and like Christopher McCandless, she took off “into the
wild.”
After stops in Thailand and Guatemala, an encounter with a Cherokee shaman
in southern Alaska lit her spiritual wisdom and convinced her to return to
Yale where she activated her music career. On Parplar, she convincingly
produces an album that gorgeously entwines folk with otherworldly sounds.
Like Gillian Welch, she can sound quite traditional. “Ride That Cyclone,”
with its rollicking ensemble of fiddles and horns, is part hillbilly
hoedown, part New Orleans brass second line. But when she explores sound as
on “My Justice,” with its cascade of a glockenspiel’s twinkling bells and
pushing her voice to its upper register, she morphs “old timey” with her
eccentric nature, assembling something truly her own. Recommend