Her voice is a bruised, angry little thing, wispy and gravelly at once. It isn’t a pretty voice by a long shot, one that can’t sustain a note for a long time. Her lyrics are stream-of-conscious ramblings, perhaps written at the behest of a therapist, full of self-deprecation and caustic wit. The music is the same, vague, desultory quality, full of reverb and tremolo, with stray bits of violins colliding over simple guitar riffs. Lisa Germano’s music is an acquired taste. It’s uncomfortable and confessional. There are no real hooks per se; it reveals its charms gradually. My favorite song of hers is ‘Cry Wolf.’ It’s written from the point of view of a date-rape victim. The central theme is in a minor, eerie key and very hypnotic. Blurry background voices ooo over the rippling guitar as Germano in lays bare the rhetoric of date rape: Girl who wants it but has no clue/ She’s says she’ll give it, cry, cry wolf/A change of mind in a back seat or that dirty room /They say she got just what she wanted. It’s the center piece song on her concept album, Geek the Girl, about an awkward girl’s misadventures in love.
Craig Laurance Gidney 