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ESSENTIAL Ride That Cyclone
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The Boston Globe | TRISTRAM LOZAW This untamed, moon-worshiping, blood-and-guts Appalachian gypsy is a peculiar folkie. http://www.boston.com/ae/music/cd_reviews/articles/2008/11/03/larkin_grimm/ Larkin Grimm's 15-song debut for Michael Gira's Young God label is informed by sex magic, the Holy Ghost, and lizards; Gira calls her "the sound of the eternal mother and wrath of all women." Indeed, as Grimm has stated, "Parplar" is "a lesbian feminist album," estrogen battling the testosterone of her "beefy male collaborators" - labelmates Fire on Fire and others adding whirls of accordion, horns, banjo, and guitars. These synergistic skirmishes add a feral energy to the tuneful, haunting gallop of "Ride That Cyclone" and the short, disturbing "The Dip." "Damn the man in you," Grimm intones on the sprightly title track. But her shaman's dementia, as eccentrically vibrant as it is (though subject to a chipmunk-y shrillness), isn't Grimm's best calling card. That prize belongs to the old-world purity of her voice. There's an almost tender innocence found beneath the stark, dark lullaby of "They Were Wrong" and the hallucinogenic coos of "Be My Host." Add the gently clanging symphonette "My Justine" and the bubbly traditionalism of "All the Pleasures" and, heard in the right light, "Parplar" is a cunningly remarkable......
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LARKIN GRIMM - PARPLAR
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Alternative Ulster Magazine | DOMINIC COYLEPerhap’s it’s the homely and woody sounding guitar, or perhaps it’s the White Witch voice she possesses......but I can’t help but feel that Larkin Grimm’s music would sound perfect deep in the forest, with the accompanying crackle of a gigantic bonfire burning close by. Wonder and anger run through Grimm’s music. Lyrics are deeply entangled-making literal sense of them is only occasionally possible. Recurring themes include troubled hearts, worried minds and the hidden perils of the un-fairer sex. The effects of a childhood spell in a religious cult and more recent period living under canvas possibly explain how sounds of the commune environment and the wilderness have seeped into her music. A banshee-folk album that deserves to be listened to. rating 8 out of 10...
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LARKIN GRIMM - PARPLAR
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Plan B Magazine UK | JESSE DARLIN’ Her story is dazzlingShe’s this beautiful hippy punk who looks like Frida Kahlo and comes on with all these soft voiced, ferocious songs and all this visceral and sensual stuff about healing and feeling and dealing and humbucking around any of these self-styled fairy-hobo kids with their self-styled stories and grand narratives. Her story is dazzling: she dropped out of Yale, but she went back after hanging with shamanesses and eco warriors; she sleeps in a tent and books her own tours. Elsewhere, it’s asserted that she’s accompanied by “ a lazy band of loose-limbed artists, bohemians, actors, perverts and degenerates” (including Michael Gira, who co-produced this album) You can hear them all whooping and murmuring and fingerpicking in the background. Thank god, though, that the music almost lives up to the narrative; and that's really saying something. In places, it’s better, and I’m glad of it: lush, Juicy, toothy, elemental post-folk with occasional astonishing lyrics....
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LARKIN GRIMM Parplar
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Word Magazine UK | JAMES MEDO Dark fairytales from introspective one-woman folk covern Larkin Grimm is a teepee-dwelling, shoeless Yale graduate who comes from the same deep immersion end of the nu-folk spectrum as Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart. She has none of those two’s hippy tweeness, despite sharing Banhart’s weakness for tolerance-testing freeform scrabbling and Newsom’s taste for unicorns and squeaky voices. Anyone who likes the sound of spooky backwoods banjo-plucking and witchy sensual cooing and purring will find lots to like in Parplar. Particularly fine are the sprightly, earthy Dominican Rum, all of them much the better for Grimm’s fearsome intensity....
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Larkin Grimm / Parplar
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The Independent (UK) | Andy Gill 5 Star Review Idiosyncratic singer-songwriter Larkin Grimm may be the next star of the wyrd-folk boom, this debut album easily equalling - in quality and sheer oddity -anything recorded by Devendra Banhart, Joanna Newsom or Espers. Don't be deceived by the somewhat prim, tremulous voice Grimm employs for the opener "They Were Wrong"; elsewhere, she employs a weird, multitracked high register, like a cartoon-mice chorus, for such tracks as "Dominican Rum" and "Mina Minou", and comes on like a predatory witch for the celebration of carnal sensuality "Blond and Golden Johns", whose frank licentiousness will bring blushes to the cheeks of any passing maiden aunts. The arrangements perfectly reflect Grimm's quirkiness, involving oddball combinations of guitar, percussion, trumpet, keyboards, and what sounds like hurdy-gurdy, to create a series of backdrops that variously sound like medieval folkie drones ("The Dip"), cajun gospel ("Fall On My Knees"), and creepy Country and Western on "Ride That Cyclone", a track infectious enough to be a left field hit....