Sophie Grimm: It’s Good to Be Grimm

Carla Gordon | September 30, 2014

Sophie Grimm

It’s Good to Be Grimm

Davenport’s, Chicago, IL, September 21, 2014

Reviewed by Carla Gordon for Cabaret Scenes

Sophie Grimm is an entertainer of extraordinary gifts—among which are poise and polish beyond her years. She is ingenuous in “ A Cock-Eyed Optimist,” darkly obsessed and truthful in “Unworthy of Your Love” (Assassins) and honestly grateful in her encore, “Just a Lucky So and So.” Then there’s the voice: rich, technically clean, and conversational at the bottom, yet lacy and fragile in the upper register. Grimm is relaxed and funny. She lands a take or an eye roll like a vaudevillian. She has a great time plumbing the goofy aspects of “I Feel Pretty.” There is quality new material, including the singer’s own “Blush, Blush, Blush” about new love. Songwriting sister Jennifer Grimm contributed “Fallin’,” about the woman on the first date daffy enough to share her picket fence fantasies with the man, ultimately realizing she went too far, then awkwardly attempting to take it back. It’s a honey of a comedy story song and, while it is rather speedy, she enables us to hear every word. At merely 26, the charming Grimm is both girly and womanly. Keep your eye on this rising star: the future is looking Grimm.