Originally published in Tutti Frutti Magazine #2
If you’ve ever been to a Grimson show, you know that the Swedish-American musician aims for grand arrangements, detail, and an indie feeling rarely seen in the Berlin scene. I’ve been a couple of times, most notably to his album release show last October, and next to the strength of Aiden Berglund’s backing band, the amount of love that went into the costumes instantly blew me away. Grimson played his full album from start to finish, in its exact order, giving away most of his guitar duties in order to deliver a vocal performance able to capture the emotional depth of his phenomenal record.
Climbing Up The Chimney has been long in the making, some of the songs written as early as 10 years before their final inclusion on Grimson’s debut album. It is ultimately a depressing record, but a youthful one, located somewhere in between the loudest outrages of Radiohead and the quietest introspections of Elliott Smith – Grimson speaks to us directly, wrapping teenage truths in poetry and meticulously delivering gems like I Hate Myself Now and Never Dealt (With Anything This Hard).
Heavy electric guitars cover us completely in the hard-hitting Heavy Machine and the emotionally bending Leave It Like You Found It, always with a focus on infectious melodies. When tender beauties like Set Gently greet us in the track list, Grimson proves an incredibly versatile songwriter, who can tell intense stories in compassionate ways and express the feeling of abandonment in a unique way; in metaphors if needed: “I was a moth eating through fabrics / Crawling through attics / Drifting through traffic”.
Together with the animated videos the songwriter single-handedly creates for his songs, Climbing Up The Chimney makes for a record that feels like the disillusionment of growing up and looking back on the complications of your youth. I can’t say that this album finishes on an optimistic note, but it is melancholic, incredibly authentic, and it captures the insecurities of your 20s in an exceptional and complex way.
I just wish this would have come out when I was 15.
Original page design for Tutti Frutti Magazine #2.