Grimm, Larkin / Parplar

Young God

Larkin Grimm is a force of nature, a self-made woman with an elemental voice from somewhere under the earth. Depending on her mood, she moans like a woman-in-full, wails like a banshee, or coos like a crazed little girl. Born 26 years ago in Memphis, Tennessee, to hippie devotees of the religious cult The Holy Order Of MANS, raised by multiple "parents" in the commune environment of the cult until age six, Grimm spent the remainder of her youth in the Appalachian mountains of Georgia after the cult disbanded. With five siblings and challenged economic circumstances, she won a full scholarship to Yale to study art. During her time at the Ivy League university, she also traveled in Thailand, Guatemala, and spent a few months hitchhiking and living by herself in a tent in Alaska. A Cherokee Indian "shamaness" named Jezebel "saved her from being eaten." After temporarily dropping out of school to hang out for a couple years with eco warriors, vagabonds, and sexual deviants in Olympia, Washington, Grimm returned to Yale, where she was a member of Dirty Projectors for a while. Upon graduation, she moved to Providence, where she was an active participant in the city's noise scene and made a few albums of improv/free-form songs for Secret Eye Records. Grimm books her own tours, travels light by herself, and lives in a tent during the warmer months. She has no permanent address and doesn't want one.  Grimm's taste for music comes from her old-time fiddler and singer father and her folksinger mother. She naturally developed into an absolutely gifted singer, fingerpicker, and multi-instrumentalist. She's shared bills with Devendra Banhart, Spires That In The Sunset Rise, Espers, Brightblack Morning Light, Entrance, Viking Moses, The Microphones, and Old Time Relijun.  Parplar was co-produced by Michael Gira and was recorded at Old Soul Studio in Catskill, NY, and Seizure's Palace in Brooklyn, and mixed at Trout Recording. Grimm truly rises to the occasion on the album, which features absolutely stellar vocal performances of songs that are soulful, whimsical, sensual, and bizarre. The production is as varied and unpredictable as Grimm herself. The list of guest musicians includes Young God's new luminaries Fire on Fire, members of Boston's Beat Circus, and Old Time Relijun, as well as various revolving members of Angels of Light.  "Grimm sounds at various times wild-eyed and placid, witchy and innocent.... She is best when she submits to her many eccentricities, manifested through bodily fixated lyrics and hair-raising singing that could spook a hardened cult leader." --Time Out NY

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