Young God Records 
Larkin Grimm : Parplar (US,2008)****
Being more of a girl alone in her previous albums, with reflections of bedroom day dreams, once overloaded with colours (CDs), than back-to-the-bone (LP), this is perfectly in balance musical imaginary, and is also a more a communal thing. This includes the colourful imagination and strong vocal arrangements like bands of post-Cerberus Shoal’s Fire On Fire (on at least one track, in person), some Appalachian and old timey elements in some tracks, through influences from people like Micah Blue Smaldone, some well produced elements (Michael Gira,..), as well as ritualistic witches and little people like expressions, fantasies giving a different meaning to her name Grimm (it was an earlier Grimm who was one of the first to collect fairytales, remember ?). All contributors seems to have their share in adding new colours to the already colourful images. In being so much more a social creative space to share, this brings us easily back to resume Larkin’s past, or where she came from and where she got some of the elements.
She was born into the religious cult The Holy Order of Mans, was raised in the Appalachian Blue Ridge Mountains. Her father was an old-time fiddler and her mother a folk singer. Only in this album these roots reappear once more, as if some fantasies before become recognisable realities once more. She has travelled through Alaska, Thailand, and Guatemala, and eventually settled to study arts at Yale, before hanging out again with, I quote, “eco warriors, vagabonds, and sexual deviants in Olympia, Washington”, before becoming a member of improvised group Dirty Projectors, back in Yale again. In Providence she got a CD contract with Secret Eye, but continues to live here and there. The artwork of the album resumes some of her past astral and musical acquaintances in images, memories of which I recognise the native-Indian like imaginary of the great Mariee Sioux, or a portrait of the past folk hero Karen Dalton, amongst a confronting image of a woman in her cave, and wicky and bruised persons.
The album features members of the Boston’s Beat Circus, the Old Time Relijun, and with the label acquainted members of Angels of Light with occasional members of the already mentioned Fire On Fire, who also have a release on the same label.
Some of the faster minimalist folk (like on “My Justine”) sounds like a mixture of Terry Riley with folk elements, an original idea, but that’s just one of the so many elements.
There’s much to surprise here, in an at times attractively bizarre but harmonious way. Expressive.
Participating musicians are Chris Sutterland, Micah Blue Smaldone, Caleb Mulkerin & Colleen Kinsella (Cerberus Shoal, Fire on Fire), Eszter Balint, Michael Gira, Samuel James, Jason Lafarge, Steve Moses, Tom Van Buskirk, Brian carpenter, Dionyso, Siobhan N.Duffy Gira, Phil Puleo, Jordan Voelker and Kenny Siegal.
