Woody
Allen calls them "kamikaze women": women ever on the collision course,
always ready to crash their planes�and ready to crash them right into
you. Years before the affected wilt of Chan Marshall, Lisa Germano gave
a powerful voice to this tempestuous breed�a heart-tugged, empathic
mess of addiction, id, and slight despair.
Germano's unlikely musical career began, in all places, as the violinist/fiddle player for John Mellencamp's Lonesome Jubilee
band�a roll she happily fulfilled for seven years. After countless
hours of session work with a number of high profile (and similarly
adult-contemporary) artists, Germano decided, at the age of 30, to
begin recording her debut solo record in 1991. On the Way Down From the Moon Palace
resulted, a self-released full-length that fits a little too
comfortably in line with her past musical associations for my
tastes�but was enough to garner the attention (and, more importantly,
the pocketbook) of Capitol Records, who soon signed Germano for the
release of her next record.
It wasn't until Happiness, her major label debut, that
Germano unleashed the beginnings of what was to become the trademark
sound�a mix of confused, ethereal wash and rasped, muttered
desperation�that would see her through the length of her solo career.
It's self-deprecation in spades; with depression, self-involvement,
cynicism, and ambivalence adding up to a promising (if disjointed)
sophomore rebirth. The record sold alright, but Germano wasn't
satisfied with the final cut nor her label's meddlings, and in an
unprecedented move, jumped ship for celebrated British "indie"
4AD�re-sequencing and expanding the record, and re-releasing it the
following year.
That same year, Germano and 4AD released the record that would come
to define Germano's creative peak�the critically-acclaimed, landmark
concept record Geek The Girl. Easily among my favorite records of that decade, Geek
is a chronicle of one girl's emotional and sexual awakening�a dark and
disturbing narrative of willful manipulation, obsession, and, of
course, desperate melancholy. the linernotes, however artless describe
it as follows: "...a girl who is confused about how to be sexual and
cool in the world but finds out she isn't cool and gets constantly
taken advantage of sexually, gets kind of sick and enjoys giving up but
at the end still tries to believe in something beautiful and dreams of
still loving a man in hopes that he can save her from her shit life").
The songs are innocently confused, with awkward, stuttered
sentimentality recalling the strains of adolescence�while traversing
the weight of adulthood. The record's conceptual linchpin is an
autobiographical tale of a stalker's attack called "...a psychopath,"
which mixes samples of a goose-bumping call to a 911 operator with the
lyrics:
a baseball bat beside my bed
a thing of mace
I'll wait around
I hear a noise
well I hear something
you win again
I'm paralyzed
Geek the Girl is sad, sloppy, sort of unhinged�but like the
best of her work, a convincingly bittersweet damnation of humanity's
greatest curse�the indelible specter of hope.
The records that followed Geek�the convincing rollercoaster of 1996s Excerpts From a Love Circus, and all-to-crystal clear Slide
from 1998� failed to really expand upon their predecessor's stark,
brilliant vision�though each do contain some fine moments. Between the
two albums, Germano took time out to record a record called Slush
with the fellows from Giant Sand and Calexico under the name OP8�a
record I have unfortunately never heard, despite a number of
recommendations.
Following the surely disappointing Slide, Germano retired
from solo performance, and was quickly dropped from 4AD. She moved to
L.A. in 1999 to become a clerk at a book store�doing occasional session
work with David Bowie, Neil Finn, that dog.'s Anna Wornaker, Iggy Pop,
Sheryl Crow, and Jewel.
In 2003 she returned with Lullaby For the Liquid Pig, her best work since Geek�on ArtistDirect's ineffable label. another concept record, Lullaby
focuses on ambivalence in addictions�and ultimately, as always,
desperate hope. I'm not sure what the future holds, as I think
ArtistDirect has already gone belly up�but with any luck, Germano will
continue her current stride. Her music does, admittedly, sometimes
teeter on the brink of Adult Contempo�and (painful as it might be to
admit) even Tori Amos comparisons aren't particularly far-fetched. but
non-the-less, her career of near-relentless misery and self-defeat in
face of commercial success could very well earn her the title of
Greatest Trainwreck of All Time.