Lisa Germano

Lisa Germano's albums are comparable to the bloodcurdling finale of a thriller. Her songs were rituals of victimhood, or a self-exorcism from victimhood. Her epic diary of insecurity and paranoia was the reportage of a mental state in desperate search for redemption that was only found in reclusion. Her art was a long and exhausting funeral, at the end of which there is nothing but psychic death. Few other musicians of the 1990s reached comparable artistic peaks.

Lisa Germano, born in 1958 in Mishawka, Indiana, was the daughter of classical musicians, and started learning violin at age 7. After Mellencamp commissioned two pieces for his film "Falling From Grace", Germano gradually discovered her artistic potential.

Germano's released her first album On The Way Down From Moon Palace (Major Bill, 1991) at the age of 33. The instrumental tracks, particularly the title-track and Screaming Angels, in which she played all the instruments herself (violin, guitar, mandolin, piano, and accordion), straddle the lines between new age, classical, and country-western music: small concerts of precious chords and faded contrasts that followed convoluted paths and got lost in surreal visions. At the end of these excursions into the collective soul there remained the sensation of the saddest melodies of Baroque music, and Dark Irie really stands, musically speaking, somewhere between Pachelbel's Canon and Albinoni's Adagio. Her songs leveraged her fragile and velvety voice, that had neither the nasally twang typical of country performers nor the roar typical of gospel singers. To accentuate the sense of vulnerability, her arrangements were almost always lacking and muted. The contents of Moon Palace are thoughts more than songs. Germano found her vocation in very timid elegies such as Hanging With A Dead Man and Cry Baby, suspended by a refrain that, although whispered, conveys through its unexpected emergence from almost silent harmonies an emotional shock from which the chanson-lament is able to build every sort of soliloquy. Withered flowers were the nocturnal blues-jazz of Blue Monday and the village-band style rhythm of Bye Bye Little Doogie. The ghostly way in which she recounted the daily tragedies of women (using only the mandolin and a distanced drum beat in Riding My Bike) was at the same time moving and chilling. Guessing Game and Dig My Own Grave betray the influence of John Mellencamp's blues but, were duly filtered by a personality that was not rebellious, but rather lyrically feminine, and then were transferred into a context that was more country context, more "typically Caucasian", more domestic, and above all more melodious. The album was crowned by a track that was practically impossible: a cross between church music and a long, deep breath that was The Other One. Her versatility was like that of the great classical composers but the text was of the dialects and allegories of the great African-American bluesmen. The mournful mood, of a sinner who can no longer be redeemed, of a victim of a curse that cannot be exorcised, is moreover the product of European existentialism more than of blues literature. Overall, Moon Palace went down in history as one of the most original and creative albums by a songwriter, ever.

The album that really brought her attention was Happiness (Capitol, 1993), a more conscious psychoanalytic self-analysis that became aware of her fragile persona in which her paranoia was mitigated only by the conviction that there exists an alternative. The presence of a proper backing band accompaniment and heavier production, (especially in the remixed version released the year after) took something away from the personal quality of the sound. Yet, coming out of her shell, Germano managed to write a universal hymn, Everyone's Victim, immersed in an uproar of grunge sounds and synth-pop which was rather unusual for her; as well as its anti-thesis, the title-track, which got lost in the din of violin, guitar, and mandolin. What’s never lacking is musicality: Energy was perhaps the most insidious earworm, empowered by with a heavy pulse, and certainly the most rock-like track ever; You Make Me Want To Wear Dresses was built on the worldly warble of Joni Mitchell and the light boogie of Lou Reed, camouflaged in a Celtic reel. The other Germano, the woman who spoke to herself, who communicated with her past and future through parables of failure, was found in Bad Attitude and Puppet; she composed imperceptible songs that often amount to only the equivalent of a stream of conscience in which the endless refrains of songs heard in childhood resound. On the several tragic ceremonial-style songs, where Germano took a breath before she plunged herself into self-flagellation, evoking the ghost of Nico. The slow circle-dance of Around The World, encircled in layers and layers of poignant harmony, and the solemn chant Sycophant, imprinted with alien hisses by the keyboards and violins, were 2 of the many stops on her "road to Calvary": the road of an innocent soul that has prepared to reckon with interior ghosts. She had entered into a labyrinth even deeper than when she withdrew into solitude to sing her requiem, The Darkest Night Of All, and it is truly difficult to imagine a night more dark than that. The diminished role of the instrumental tracks perhaps also expressed a refusal to confess herself through indirect symbols any longer. Happiness was the product of a sense of confusion, which was reflected in the music. It was the self-portrait of a woman clutched by fear, yet still able to continuously mock herself; indeed that was almost a reason to live itself. With one of the most exposed psychoanalytic cases since the time of Joni Mitchell, Germano conquered, definitively, an honorable place among the most creative musicians of her time. The album was revised and reissued under the same title, Happiness (4AD, 1994).

With Geek The Girl (4AD, 1994) six months later, Germano returned to the solipsism of the first work, for she was not ashamed of her fears. Instead she turned them into a concept album about the condition of the liberated woman. With an even more child-like diction, Germano made her protagonist into the sacrificial lamb of modern society. In the guise of a mentally ill woman who repeats her mantra with her eyes closed, hoping that the evil people of the world would magically disappear, Germano ended up reviving the darkest nightmares of Nico and the saddest tales of Leonard Cohen. Her songs became pure existential shivers. Her greatest gift was the disarming simplicity with which she could create the most disturbing atmospheres (the confession of powerlessness in My Secret Reason, the sexual disorder of the title-track, and the sense of failure in A Guy Like You). They were songs that thrived on nothing; they were like only an iota of breath or a lone spark which remained in an extinguished fire or a gesture stopped mid-air or being adrift in a sea of encapsulated melancholy. They were wisps of life that filtered through that slight opening of the spirit where hope, desire, anxiety, fear, and delusion all meet. Its an album that fades away with the last few songs in a few scattered chords. Much of the album was sung and played at the limit of madness, from the nursery rhyme Trouble, on which the background was a happy dissonance worthy of Penguin Cafe Orchestra, to a schizophrenic dialog in Cancer Of Everything, swept away by a jubilation of string instruments. The climax was Psychopath, an auto-biographical psychodrama which re-enacts the tragic phonecall recording of a woman raped in her own home without anyone coming to heraid, while Germano hums in a childlike manner, inhabiting the headspace of this victim as she attempts to soothe herself, before the nightmare sinks into abyss, from which the album’s haunting leitmotif folk melody returns Other unsettling lyrics were found in Sexy Little Girl Princess, on eerie harpsichord, and in Cry Wolf, but her way of telling the more horrendous stories was not one of accusation but of upset to the point of tears. This was when the faintest of smiles blossoms, in Of Love And Colors and Stars, as if the heaven opened up and one fully appreciated the subtle and tender musicality that could be felt down to one’s bones; enough to make the deaf fall in love. The instrumental Phantom Love is like a symphonic overture, martial and imposing. More than a concept album, Geek feels like a mass.

The 4th album was Excerpts From A Love Circus (4AD, 1996). The infantile theme that permeated all of her work was immediately recognizable in Baby On The Plane: a circle-dance of violin, peals from the keyboards, and thunder from bass drum all created an atmosphere which was at the same time youthful but powerless to rejoice. Not melancholy and not nostalgic, but almost involuntarily pensive. The psychedelic merry-go-round of I Love A Snot was limitless timbres and sound effects that proliferated around a sing-song recited behind a filter. The dramaturgy of Germano was, in reality, subtle and cunning. The almost The psychoanalytical quality of her musical style came to light in the autobiographical meditation of A Beautiful Schizophrenic, revealed in her sinister dissonances, but camouflaged in her airy refrain. The same Germano that timidly whispered Bruises was a passionless actress, a mediator between a miserable reality and a dream still alive. The passionate waltz We Suck was extinguished by the desolate, dizzy chords of the piano and violin, once again frustrated by her romanticism. The almost imperceptible blues monolog Forget It, worthy of Nick Drake, had the perverse fragility of a suicide or of insanity. A day-dream of an oriental caravan filled Lovesick, and the classic dreamy harmonies of Victoria's Secret contained hidden within them the masochist perversions of Velvet Underground era Nico. Even the most carefree moments mislead the listener: Small Heads, that could have been a catchy pop music hit, was an ode to solitude. Germano stubbornly repeated her neurotic love and insecurity, perpetually abused by life. Her impersonations border on parody, like when she imitated a Parisian singer in Messages From Sophia, accompanied by mournful accordion and solemn piano. Or like when she observed in astonishment with an almost Franciscan tone, the wonders of nature in Singing To The Birds, or within the cloudiness of the cellos in Big, Big World, just two steps from paradise. But, in reality, these were the more touching moments, as if the woman were trying to sing lullabies and serenades to herself alone. The phantasmal violin was her second voice, almost always grumbling in the background, but this was just enough to hear a dramatic counter, a clash in the harmony, a warning of uneasiness. From a technical point of view, a large part of the melodies were arranged similar to folk-rock, through the counterpoint of a plethora of instruments from bright timbres to the beats of a march. And some element at some point in the song, whether it be a lament played on violin or a softly hummed melody, always managed to pull at the heartstrings Less terrifying than Geek The Girl, less claustrophobic (thanks also to a pair of eccentricities, like making her cats sing), and immersed in a less sterile landscape, Love Circus found a way out of the tunnel in which she was holed up.

Howie Gelb, camouflaged behind the pseudonym OP8, and accompanied by the usual rhythm section of John Convertino and Joey Burns (the Calexico), provided the backing vocals and accompaniment on Slush (Thirsty Ear, 1998). A minor album, one of transition, on which only 3 songs were featured (the mantra of If I Think Of Love, the classically styled lullaby It's A Rainbow, and the solemn garage-rock Tom Dick & Harry), it served as evidence to the crystalline purity of Germano's music.

Slide (4AD, 1998) represented the return to her usual style, the manic intensity of her major works. Only Wood Floors and Guillotine truly sank their claws into her desolate interior, austere and composed, they were entrusted to the piano, as befits the great intellectuals of rock. Germano, however, found it hard to be comfortable in the role of intellectual: her true personality was lulled into the tender, innocent refrains that welled up like in the desolate plantation song Way Below The Radio. The very romantic "geek" that constituted the core of her ego reappeared in the dissonant whirlwind of Electrified. Perhaps the dream-like feel of the album was a little too bare, but the cautious melodies of If I Think Of Love needed of a change of scenery. The eccentric arrangements (fairground accordions played like pipe organs, ethereal violins, languid guitar chords, ornamental keyboards, not to speak of the staring pulses) remained one of her musical milestones, in as much as they complemented her psychoanalytic delusions. Crash and Turning Into Betty thrived almost entirely on the unpredictability of the rhythms, and on the arrangements. Reptile was an apotheosis of her style, and was anything but triumphal, with the chimes and whispers that followed each other in a forest of surreal sounds and the tired bass drum in the foreground. This "Alice" of rock had not finished her stroll around Wonderland.

Coming after four years of silence, Lullaby For Liquid Pig (Ineffable, 2002) represents a substantial break with the past. This time Germano's whispered laments sound excessively fragile and ethereal (Nobody's Playing, Pearls, Dream Glasses Off, Lullaby for Liquid Pig) and melodically deficient. She does better with the unusually distorted and hallucinated Liquid Pig, resembling a video shot through a violent fit of neurosis, and the extreterrestrial Lies Lies And Lies. Melody is not the forte of this album, but at least three songs stand out for their tunefulness: the shivering, hymn-like Paper Doll, (strings, harpsichord), the music-box lullaby of Candy, and the tenderly upbeat It's Party Time.

By her very high standards, In the Maybe World (Young God, 2006) is an easy and unassuming album. Germano dispenses with her ability to create a claustrophonic sense of psychodrama, and withdraws to a new trench, the piano-based elegy of Joni Mitchell. Alone with her piano, though, Germano often sounds like a verbose obnoxious loser instead of the angelic lost soul of ten years earlier. The reason is very simple: the music is vastly inferior. Whenever the music lacks evocative power, the lyrics lose their emotional power too. Many songs are less than three-minute long, and only one is longer than four. It probably tells how much Germano had to say.

Germano regressed to the format of the chamber lieder for strings and piano on Magic Neighbor (Young God, 2009). The result is evanescent and translucent in Snow, tinkling and enchanted in Painting the Doors, but the symphonic excess of To The Mighty One clearly shows the risks of a nonclassical musician embarking on orchestral arrangements. Best is A Million Times, a Donovan-esque lullabye in an eccentric setting of guitar and noise. There are several eccentric detours, from the demented singalong Suli Mon to the piano-driven folk dance Kitty Train.

No Elephants (2013), a concept about the relationship between nature and technology, is a collection of humble piano ballads that sometimes employ sounds of nature and sometimes sounds of technology with mixed results. Both the idea and the implementation are too fragile to amount to real music. One can salvage Last Straws For Sale and No Elephants which, with better arrangements, could be touching meditations, and Strange Bird, where guitar tones and a beeping phone duet in surreal mimicry.

Lisa Germano, who had spoken openly about depression and agoraphobia, which made touring difficult, largely abandoned the musical career for humble jobs and a quieter life. She played violin again with John Mellencamp in 2018 and 2023.