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Lisa Germano, "Geek the Girl"
Lisa Germano’s first proper album for 4AD is a rare thing: a transitional album that stands as a career highlight. Somewhere midway between the jangling folk-rock of Happiness and the woozy, melancholy piano ballads of her more current work lies this uncomfortably autobiographical and disturbing examination of disillusionment and the dark side of sexuality. While she certainly continued to write great songs after this album, she would never again be edgy, sharp-focused, or harrowing (or experimental). Of course, that is no surprise, as this sort of wrenching catharsis can only come from a dark psychological place that no one could possibly want to regularly inhabit.
 
I bought this on a whim at a used record store in 1994, blissfully unaware that it would be the apogee of both Germano’s career aspirations and my brief dalliance with an "if it’s on 4AD, it must be good" policy towards album-buying.Picked up by 4AD after a very short-lived and disillusioning stint on Capitol (complete with a very embarrassing music video), Lisa seemed to have found the perfect home with Ivo Watts-Russell.In fact, he was so taken with her that he even remixed and transformed her major label album (Happiness) into something darker and more compelling.More importantly, Germano’s sound (perfected here) was simultaneously the archetypal 4AD sound and a dark twist on it: Geek the Girl is what happens when the doe-eyed romanticism and shimmer of bands like Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil smacks headlong into the ugly realities of love’s bad side.Appropriately, the album drew a lot of well-deserved critical acclaim upon its release.
The liner notes explain that Geek the Girl is the story of "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" yet "…still tries to believe in something beautiful."That tug-of-war between hopefulness and painfully dwelling on past humiliations is what keeps the album both emotionally affecting and listenable.Things get pretty dark at times, like the very unsettling "…A Psychopath" (which features shrieking from a real 911 call), but there are many more times where Lisa unexpectedly launches into absolutely gorgeous melodies (like the chorus of the otherwise bilious "Of Love and Colors").The transition from such bitterness to tender warmth is both heavenly and heartbreaking, as Lisa seems defiantly unwilling to let the darkness drag her to the bottom but not quite wary enough to avoid future disasters.
Notably, Geek the Girl is a great album rather than a collection of great songs.In fact, there are only a few stand-alone gems, like the aforementioned "Of Love and Colors," "Trouble," and "Cry Wolf" (though lyrics like "she’ll change her mind in that back seat or that dirty room, they’ll say she got just what she wanted" make for some very uneasy listening).Nevertheless, the album is so creative, lush, varied, and brilliantly sequenced that it holds together beautifully as an immersive whole.Also, even the less-than-great songs tend to contain at least one truly inspired idea.Lisa and collaborator Malcolm Burn employ a wide sonic palette and display a surprising amount of playfulness throughout the album.Despite Germano's high profile background as John Mellencamp's violinist, she and Burn are quite sparing with strings here (though they are used to great effect when they do appear, such as in the sneeringly caustic "Cancer of Everything").Instead, the duo step out of Lisa's comfort zone to depend on a mixture of guitars, accordions, pianos, harps, dulcimers, and a wide array of studio effects.Geek the Girl seldom uses instrumentation in conventional rock ways, as there are a number of odd instrumental passages scattered about (like the faux-Middle Eastern surf interlude that begins the album) and sounds are often tweaked to shiver, glisten, or reverberate in striking ways.
While there are certainly a few awkward missteps into preciousness, such as the chorus of "oh oh, I’m not too cool" in the title track, this otherwise solid album is probably Germano’s creative zenith.There are a number of great ideas here (like the sultry, deadpan verses of that same song or the odd ethnic flourishes strewn all over the album) that were well-worth exploring further, but that never happened.Frustratingly, Germano responded to Ivo-Watts urge not to repeat herself by following Geek with the uneven and sometimes awful rock of Excerpts From A Love Circus.Also, while her post-Circus songwriting continued to get better and better, all of Germano’s later albums fall within much narrower stylistic confines (and her career would be dogged by frequent label changes, poor album sales, personal problems, and lengthy hiatuses).I still love her intimate, husky voice and sad, vulnerable songs, but I can’t help but miss the days when the accompanying music was still unpredictable.
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