Plenty of ink was spilled in 2003 when Minneapolis psych-rock wunderkind Michael Yonkers' 1969 debut Microminiature Love was rescued from collector hell. While the reissue of his first album received all the attention, his second, Grimwood, remained in limbo. Recorded in 1969, Grimwood originally materialized in 1974, after label frustrations scattered Microminiature's original band, and treatments for a 1971 warehouse accident left Yonkers all but crippled. The album is the residue of those years, a soft-focus folk record with tiny avant-garde tendrils.
Be dubious of anyone proffering Grimwood as a more personal Yonkers record. Though it wholly abandons the athletic fuzz of his debut as well as his nascent lyrical protestations, the album erects stockades and gathers provisions for a Midwestern winter. There is plenty of tragedy-- during "Sandcastle", Yonkers and a lover first laugh at, then are overtaken by, an army of crabs-- but the album is less a product of inner torment than of a dark, eager intelligence.
Yonkers delivers his tragicomic illusions with chaste folk constructions and the remnants of his frazzled explorations strained over top. Oscillating tones threaten to overtake sloth acoustic guitars on "Lonely Fog" and "162". Echo-chamber apparitions hijack the final minutes of opener "Damsel Fair and Your Angel", while a flange pedal is abused and discarded by "Tripping Through the Rose Gardens". On Grimwood's longest and best track, "The Day Is Through", Yonkers plays tag with a druggy horn before breaking into improvised nonsense: they go "Dee de dee/ Da dooda do do/ Ah whooooooo", Yonkers and the horn both. Grand fun, even if these departures mask the fact that well over half of Grimwood slugs along without accent. Capable only of a sober, Leonard Cohen-tenor, Yonkers needs those noisy little foils. Without them, he languishes dryly, his voice blending into his strumming for extended stretches of "And Give It to You", "Sunflower", and the title track. Even at its gossamer best-- "The Big Parade", "The Answer"-- his pipes threaten parody of Renaissance fair bard-ism.
Grimwood, a rainy and consternated affair throughout, offers a brief glimpse at an alternative. The opening seconds of "The Day Is Through" are a disarming studio accident, an aborted take of Yonkers and pals goofing off. "[Stoned laughter]...Brain? Brain, are you there?...[Giggling]...Let's get down to business." Contrast this with Yonkers' eccentric reputation, including the appropriately baiting cover art: he is jovial and in good company. Microminiature's exultations bought Yonkers all the legend he would ever need; a few years later, catastrophe would rob him of it. Yonkers was playing with house money in 1969, though he couldn't have known it. Grimwood is his searching, frustrated consolation prize.
