Larkin Grimm is a coin and, like every coin, she has two sides. There is the side that glides on stage an hour earlier, plucks up a miniature harp and sweetly sings about lions and stars and the wide wondrous sky, and there is the other side that swings a devilish axe and introduces the next song, Mina Minou, not by title but by saying, “this is a song about the queen of the alien cats.”
“So it’s a Beach Boys song?” someone shouts from the crowd. And everyone laughs because there is good and there is evil in the music of that crew, too.
Grimm doesn’t sing Mina Minou. Instead, it’s like the queen of the alien cats has crawled up into the body of Larkin Grimm and has taken over the vocal reins. This is the demented voice of a feline cartoon. And the guitar is equally possessed. For this song, it is a medieval harpsichord.
After some haunting minimalist riffs, the song ends and Larkin Grimm is exorcised.
“In these economic times, we all do strange things,” she says and then explains that she’s decided to pursue plastic surgery. “I just wanna cut people open,” she says before flipping the coin over again. “Maybe.”
There’s a song about “loose women cleaning up oil spills” that is a tribute to Ali Farka Touré. There’s a song called The Butcher that sounds like The Doors at the end of the world, disembodied, whistling and led now by Morrison’s psychotropic soul sister.
She sings:
“The usefulness of being still has come and gone / Just like the jolt of cruel dreams before the dawn / Or like that melting piece of ice you sit upon / Becoming number than the feathers of a molting yellow swan.”
She chants:
“Without a mind / Without a body or a mind / Without a mind / Without a body or a numb and useless mind.”
She weaves her spell through the ears and out the eyes of everyone in the attendance. Then, there’s a song about sex and decapitation based on a poem written by Hafiz. It’s the Muslim S&M anthem. She wrote it after living with Sufis who took mushrooms. Say what? Right. Two sides, one coin.
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The three-piece band – Larkin is backed only by bass and drums – manages to invoke the sound of a hellish choir with its dungeon beats, deep devil riffs. These are echoes from a sublime netherworld.
“Oh mama / I’m your spirit / Be my host / I’m the Holy Ghost.”
That’s the refrain of Be My Host a song – “for the lapsed Catholic girls,” Grimm explains – that is great for fans of the vocal wobblings of Animal Collective and fellow Young God Records discoveree Devendra Banhart.
With its trippy tale of Mother Mary on a unicorn, this, clearly, represents the side of light. The next song then must represent the dark. “Pool of Milk” is a song about “fucking your inner child,” Grimm says before launching into the stripped-down, psychedelic hymn. Or is that a dirge?
The hardest part of all of this dark vs. light, hellish vs. heavenly, rock vs. rouge stuff, according to Grimm: hitting the effects pedals in five-inch heels.
Then there’s Blond and Golden Johns, which is a song “for those of you who wished you could get a blowjob from me,” which, from the collective entranced stare, looks to be just about everyone in the Knit. There’s Hope for the Hopeless, which, like many of its Parplar siblings – but perhaps more than any of them – balances perfectly upon the razor of blessing and curse.
Grimm ends her set by picking up the harp, re-embodying the angel of psych-folk and reporting from atop the clouds: “Paradise is so many colors, so many colors I have to remember.”
Now’s the part where the band walks off the stage but you know they will return for an encore. Larkin and Co. seem to know that this game of exit-and-return is a farce. The stage is empty for no more than two seconds. Really.
Back at the microphone, Grimm implores, “Are you hippies enough?! Did you do enough Ecstasy five years ago to sing along?!”
The crowd has grown and together we scream “Yes!” because we would scream “Yes!” in response to any question posed by the white witch on stage. Larkin Grimm teaches everyone to hum and holler a simple vocal line and, confident that her charge can handle it, starts up Ride that Cyclone.
In a crowd of New York hipsters, two sides of the same coin: The room sings, and the room chants. But in that room, if you close your eyes, Grimm is all alone.
Set: Flash and Thunder*, Mina Minou, Dominican Rum, The Butcher, The Burglar, Be My Host, They Were Wrong, Pool of Milk, Nothing to Worry About, Blond and Golden Johns, Hope for the Hopeless, Paradise*
Encore: Ride That Cyclone -> Durge, crap she hasn’t finished yet, My Justine^
*Larkin on mini harp ^w/ Piran the Iranian Princess on violin
One Response
Josh, you are amazing. I want to publish each sentence you have ever written. I am renting a huge billboard in Times Square for you. All of you. Love, Hugs, & Kisses,
Grandma marcie