Lisa Germano has been plugging away making music since the mid-eighties, and somehow, inexplicably, is 51 years old. Her voice, her face, her sound, all convey a mood of both youthfulness and timelessness. Like other more ‘mature’ musicians operating distinctly to the left of centre on the American alt scene (Johnny Dowd comes to mind), she is one who bucks the trend: for her, creativity and imagination flood in as she gets older. Her new album, Magic Neigbour, is beautiful, and arguably the best of her meandering, quixotic career.
For all her gifts, and the fact her reputation among critics is outstanding, it is forgivable to not know who she is. Or, more likely, you know who she is from her work with other artists. She was, for example, part of Neil Finn’s Seven Worlds Collide project both in 2001 and 2009 (contributing some of the supergroup’s finest songs, such as ‘Paper Doll’ and ‘Reptile’), and in 2002 contributed to David Bowie’s Heathen album. She’s worked on three albums by Eels, Iggy Pop’s Beside You and, perhaps less worth heralding, The Globe Sessions by Sheryl Crow.
So she has friends. But any notion of ever-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride is banished on first listen to Magic Neighbour. Throughout her career, which began in 1991 with her first solo album On The Way Down From The Moon Place, she has perfected what we might call ‘fairytale balladry’, for want of a better way to sum up the fact so many of her songs have a simplicity to their melody, structure and instrumentation that evokes merry-go-rounds and carnivals, albeit with a certain darkness. But hers is not a darkness without at least some kind of hope, as exemplified on ‘To The Mighty One’ .
Her voice is her most affecting weapon. Hushed and whispering, she is constantly singing lullabies, but not in a twee, Vashti Bunyan sort of way. Her voice, to use a wretched term, is ‘lived in’, even though it still maintains an innocence and wide-eyed curiosity that still, on her seventh album, is her hallmark.
Early in her career she was firmly lo-fi, which explains her kinship with Eels, and Magic Neighbour balances the piano and her signature violin with fairly loose acoustic guitar, such as ‘Simple’. ‘The Prince of Plati’ is Germano at her mournful best, and typically, her tone is one akin to a grown up trying to console an upset child. What marks this out as so special is the fact there is no irony or subtle meaning to be explored or deciphered, nor any psychological dramas or, really poetics. Germano’s music is exactly how an adult must speak to a child, with direct simplicity and honesty, and therefore, great profundity. Even on songs that hint at romance or relationships, like ‘A Million Times’, she assumes this very tender persona.
This style of hers is highly original. At some points she is comparable to Hope Sandoval and Mazzy Star, though Germano is less ambiguous in her imagery. Germano’s songs are on a deeper emotional level than Joan As Police Woman and less melodramatic than Tori Amos. Johnny Marr said of her during the first Seven Worlds Collide outing, “she is everything I like in a female singer”. Johnny Marr, who these days has more good taste than talent, is correct.
