Anybody who thinks the spirit of the 1960s is dead shall henceforth be pointed in the direction of Larkin Grimm, a true flower child if there ever was one. Hell, according to her bio she was born in a commune. I saw her play at a show last night, and here some choice quotes (not verbatim, as they're mostly from memory):
"I have a lot of bad spirits in me right now. I just came from Providence, RI. That town has a lot of negativity in it, and a lot of inner conflict in the people there, but they're good hearted people, and they're fighting the negativity, and I admire that."
"This next song is about the time I was riding a tandem bicycle past the cemetery where H.P. Lovecraft is buried, and there are ghosts in there, and they're angry at me, because they're dead and I'm alive, and they're trying to inhabit my body, because they can tell I'm feeling sexual lust, which, you know, weakens your body against evil spirits."
"This song is about murdering my spirit boyfriend. A spirit boyfriend is something you don't want to have... like, it seemed okay at first when the spirit asked me out on a date, because I didn't have a real boyfriend at the time, but eventually the spirit asks you to go with them into another dimension, which you don't want to do. You want to stay in your dimension, because that's where you belong, but the spirit really doesn't belong there. It's like when you marry somebody from another country, and they want you to come back to their country. 'Hey, let's move to Finland! It'll be awesome!' You know?"
"I like Islam. I think it's a beautiful religion. It's this weird combination of sexual lust and oneness with God, and I think that's awesome."
There was another one involving falling asleep and teleporting across the Atlantic Ocean to talk to a friend or something, then waking up with burn blisters on her arm, but I forget most of that.
So she's nuts, right? Her music is nuts too, but it's also amazing. And she's an amazing performer.
She reminds me of Bjork, in that she seems relatively unassuming, if a little bit out in left field, until she opens her mouth to sing and this enormous and overpowering sound comes out. She also reminds me of Bjork in some of her, for lack of a better term, vocal histrionics (that would be latter-day Medulla Bjork, not "Hyper-Ballad" Bjork).
Whatever the reference point may be, the end result is a performance that's intense, bold, and occasionally quite beautiful. You can listen to the mp3s on her website to get an idea of her sound, but live it's just her and her guitar, and no multiple voice overdubs, no cavernous reverb and delay, no autoharp overdubs or anything. Her record (Harpoon, which I'm pegging as the first great album of 2005 that took me until 2006 to discover, happening as it did just a few weeks ago) is more interesting to listen to, but the live renditions are much more absorbing.
So, if you ever get a chance to see her live, I would highly recommend it. Just sit back and let her powerful voice sweep you away, until she pauses in between songs to regale you with a Darren Daulton-esque story that's almost as entertaining as the song, but in a completely different way. A very fun time.
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