Recap: Larkin Grimm at The Frequency

Decider applauds anyone who was successfully guided to a “spirit orgasm” by folk-transient Larkin Grimm during Tuesday night’s show at The Frequency. While Grimm’s stated metaphysical goal for the audience may have proved too lofty for some, that didn’t make her set of Appalachian-gone-psychedelic tunes any less powerful. Grimm took the stage with a dulcimer in her lap, opening with a droning rendition of “The Last Tree,” and then picked up her acoustic guitar for the organ-centric folk of “Anger In Your Liver.” With the exception of “The Last Tree,” Grimm’s set was largely centered on her 2008 album Parplar. After a few tunes Grimm was joined by a young-looking kid with messy hair by the name of John Houx. Throughout the performance, Houx offered rich vocal harmonies and throat-singing, and plucked sparse melodies from a huge Asian stringed instrument called a gu-zheng.

At one particularly fun, if slightly weird, moment, Grimm insisted that audience members close their eyes and take their souls on a “psychedelic journey past the pink pyramids” to find a “spiritual orgasm.” This, um, journey was taken during the song “Ride The Cyclone,” for which Grimm picked out a few audience members to come on stage and sing back-up. Her set came to a close with a haunting number called “Durge,” but not before Grimm requested: “Sing along if any of you happen to speak Sanskrit.” One audience member replied, “Isn’t that a font?’

Madisonian songwriter Vid Libert opened the show with a catchy set of nocturnal psych-folk. During set opener “Nice Folks,” Libert strummed away at his beaten acoustic guitar as his twang-y croon soared across the room, pleading, “Don’t play that game, boy.” From the depressive “In Twilight” to the yearning waltz “Tennessee,” Libert’s well-crafted tunes sounded remarkably full, coated with white-noise crescendos and swelling pedal-steel guitar. Libert closed with a haunting unreleased tune entitled “Felt A Ghost,” and then local project Zola Jesus—appearing as a duo this time—latched their noisy hooks into the audience, ending a brief set of operatic weirdness with a droning rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody To Love.”