Net Nuggets 11: Larkin Grimm

Larkin Grimm: Some songs, live on Airborne Event [zip]

Watching Larkin Grimm performing live earlier this year, sat there on the floor on the front row so stoned that the outside world could only be viewed through a button hole (a kind of tear in the fabric of nothingness), with everything out there conflated into two dimensions—the third dimension reduced to the distance between the mind and the flat film it perceived out there, beyond its touch—the thing that most obviously grabbed one's attention (and the only thing on which it seemed possible to maintain focus) was Ms. Grimm's remarkably large, perfectly round and absolutely wide open mouth, wherein words like fragments of reality reside—the important ones, to do with the body, the mind, nature, the city, the mythological, the everyday, woman, man, sweet revenge, bitter hate, the impending apocalypse and, somewhat miraculously (yet at the heart of it all), love.

Manichean and Christian seeds of thought have rendered our minds too fallow for us to be able to fathom or reconcile any longer something as basic as, say, the vengeful God of the Old Testament with the forgiving Jesus of the New. And we've only been as illuminated as we've been dulled by the Enlightenment. But there's another body of knowledge; one that doesn't pit an «evil» against a «good»—one that doesn't reduce reality into two words, and to which all such reductions are banal, anyway. It's from this rage, intervowen with compassion (and knowing no such distinctions), that Grimm's words spring. The Age of Aquarius, from Hell. From the mouth of the universe. From that mouth, enunciating every syllable of weird truth swirling from within it:

The pine cone told me what to do, and I obeyed:
«Remind Apollo of the boaster whom he flayed»
I asked that butcher if he ever felt dismayed
Counting organs in the body when the flesh is stripped away
Without a mind
Without a body or a mind
Without a mind
Without a body or a numb and useless mind

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
Without a mind
Without a body or a mind
Without a mind
Without a body or a numb and useless mind

I guess I'm sick, I can't get up, I try and try
I wipe the crusted-out mascara from my eye
And hear the songs people sing before they die
There is a world above the blankets that are blocking out the sky
Without a mind
Without a body or a mind
Without a mind
Without a body or a numb and useless mind

In streets where glass is ground into a powder fine
The drifting wind will blow it grinding through your mind
And the curves where skulls have cracked and teeth have been realigned
Hold trees where multitudes of pissing dogs encounter the sublime
Without a mind
Without a body or a mind
Without a mind
Without a body or a numb and useless mind

I have nothing to add.

Here are the details:

1. Hope for the Hopeless
The album version of this bears the mark of co-producer Michael Gira's typically stoic approach to lust for vengeance, remaining unnervingly in control throughout, whereas this rendition spirals upwards into a malignant but righteous incantation for someone's final downfall. Although I seem to remember this being dedicated to members of the Bush administration, its topical content is never explicit, leaving the song open for the delight of anyone holding a grudge—not to mention gluttons for punishment, longing to be cleansed of all their sins. The only hope for the truly hopeless is the ultimate redemption, the inevitable manifestation of hopelessness waiting for them at the end end of their rope, at the end of this tune.
(Original version on Parplar.)

2. Be My Host
A song for brave threnodist Marissa Nadler, this track is unalloyed love. A love song from the mouths of all bad spirits.
(Original version on Parplar.)

3. The Butcher
Along with Parplar album track «Dominican Rum»—and possibly the title track off of Grimm's second album, 2006's The Last Tree—«The Butcher» puts Grimm up there with the most accomplished lyricists ever. (No exaggeration.) It's astounding how words that on the face of it have nothing to do with your life can seem to speak from its core. This is spiritual music, without the bullshit, and the feeling of well-being in the face of the song's mortality and sorrow is the strength brought on by the sound of perfection.
(A studio version has yet to be released.)

4. Sugar Hill
Visceral lyrics weren't invented by the Stones or Black Sabbath. A traditional American folk song, «Sugar Hill» has been recorded by the likes of the Carter Family, but never by Grimm on any of her albums. As per traditional custom, the lyrics have been slightly reworked by the singer.

5. One Sweet Drop
Another original song that's yet to be given the studio treatment, this one's all broken heart and prayer for sleep.

6. They Were Wrong
Less precious than the album version, for some of us this—along with Entrance's «Lost in the Dark» (with its lines like: «Some fatal night when the dark truth hits you / I won't be there to fake a smile»)—is the most chilling song imaginable. No kind words here. But then, you can kill with kindness. To those the song would apply to, there's a tenderness to the delivery of the lyrics' brutal truth—a truth you'd never even hear from a lover, friend, family member or therapist (and least of all an enemy)—that you cannot really expect, so should accept with gratitude. What's the point in indulging in hope, when there is none?
(Original version on Parplar.)

All the above songs were recorded on 10 November, 2008 for Dan Bodah's show on WFMU. Grimm, who sings and plays guitar, banjo, guzheng and the guitar case, is accompanied here by John Houx, who plays the guitar, guzheng and sings back-up.

Anyway, if you want to get your eyes poked out and if you want to get your thrills, if you want to get your head knocked out, download «Sugar Hill» and the rest of these songs. Do yourself that favour. Then go buy Parplar, and if you like that, Larkin Grimm's first two albums.