Soul retrieval

"Larkin Grimm's 2012 release (...) finds her still embracing a striking theatricality while being her most immediately accessible album yet. Compared to her sometimes cryptic earlier albums and Parplar's whipsaw extremes, Soul Retrieval has an almost therapeutic feeling at work from the start, with "Paradise and So Many Colors" feeling a bit like a 1920s vaudeville romantic interlude; an ode to joy and self-esteem that the liner notes gently hint at ... There's also an elegant feeling of prime late-'60s/early-'70s acid folk thanks to the recorders ... Tony Visconti, famed for his work with Marc Bolan and others, helped co-produce the album and plays throughout ... But this is very much Grimm's album rather than a stunt casting, with a core band including drummer Otto Hauser and harpist Jesse Sparhawk following her overall lead ... Grimm's vivid lyrical voice remains perfectly intact".

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"This album is about telling a story. Not everyone will be enthralled by the many stories Grimm tells here; very few, if any, stories have universal appeal. But to try to reduce this album to basic critical statements like "Grimm's slightly psychedelic folk creates a dreamlike mood," or "her imagery-rich lyrics give the album a very poetic quality," is to do violence to this record. Grimm no doubt wants the listener to be entertained by her stories, strange-sounding as they are, but the goal of this album isn't to "entertain" in the commonly understood sense. The entertainment value of this album is one that requires rapt attention, something that threw me off upon first listening to the record. Soul Retrieval won't sell millions of copies like many "entertaining" albums do, but the songs that Grimm sings and the stories she tells through those songs are much more resonant than much else that's out there".

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