Secret Eye Records
2006
The Last Tree
About This Album
Larkin Grimm's second album for Secret Eye shows that her knack for strikingly theatrical songs and performances remains strong. If no album can quite capture the sheer, surprising, enjoyable warmth and vividness of her live work (persuading an audience to howl joyously like wolves is just one small part of it), this is still much more than simply an audio souvenir. Working with a pool of collaborators including family members and fellow singer/performer Lara Polangco, Grimm moves between full arrangements and stark, stripped down efforts featuring just her and her guitar. If the term "acid folk" -- or the even more overused "freak folk" -- is long since starting to wear out its welcome, it's because it doesn't quite capture the blend of styles artists like Grimm bring to bear; it's as much hints of drone and film soundtrack orchestrations as it is unplugged guitar in a dark, mystic landscape. Perhaps it's no surprise that the song lengths themselves vary widely, from barely two-minute long pieces like "The Sun Comes Up" to the over-ten-minute long "Little Weeper," the latter all the more striking for being a vocal/guitar-only number that maintains its focused strength throughout.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9 and 10)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.