By Michael Freedberg
The Boston Phoenix | July 2, 1993
Those who’ve heard former John Mellencamp violinst Lisa Germano do spunky rock and artful aura in her new Happiness (Capitol) will immediately say “Suzanne Vega,” and they won’t be wrong. Like Vega, Germano stamps her tunelessly acoustic song-speech on all kins of post-Velvets, bar-band formats linking clunky noise and theatrical melancholy. She hasn’t Vega’s succinct wit or her eye for the costume-drama lives her intended audience lives. She swells in herself and sings her diary, which works quite well; touching tha vast world inside one’s mind holds as much sway over the self-adornment crowd as songs about physical abuse and getting dressed up.
And Germano knows who to borrow from to expand her frame of reference. Sinéad O’Connor’s dark spanking percussion and howling pennywhistle modality, Sade’s lullaby emoting, Debbie Harry’s snide and punkish whine, the supersensitive underside of hard-eyed woman’s honky-tonk—it’s all there in the kissy tête-à-tête called “You Make Me Want To Wear Dresses” and the bagpipy orchestration and hammerhead drumming that struggle through “Happiness.”
Until Vega or Sade or Sinéad O’Connor comes up with a new album, there won’t be anything to match Happiness for pent-up heartthrob rhythm, a voice that pouts to be kissed, and to hell with political advocacy—or for music sweet and restless with melodies that shine and beats that shower the ear. I’ve been paying “Sycophant,” “Everyone’s Victim,” and “The Darkest Night of All” right next to Sinéad’s “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance” and Madonna’s “Waiting” every chance I can get, and I swear they and Germano sound like sisters. (Sisters of the night!) There’s the sneer-and-roll of “Energy,” so breathy and insistent. There’s a silly cute bluesification of “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'” that all but walks across Lou Reed. And the ingenue’s midnight fantasy called “The Darkest Night of All” is as melancholy as Pam Tillis at her most angelic.
How can music this feline and furious not dominate the straightforward buskers who shared the stage with Germano some weeks back at an “In Their Own Words” songwriters’ showcase at the Middle East? What chance had Johnny Clegg (who drew the most fans), David Baerwald, and Freedy Johnston against a woman whose entire presence reeked of the diva’s life as she flaunted sexual energy?
Germano all but stole the show. DOes this mean that even in ethnicity-conscious 1993 America you can still become whoever you wanna be? Hell yes; Germano made her impersonations look easy. Taking turns with Clegg, Baerwald, and Johnston, singing one song each turn, she paraded earthy secret desires (not so kinky, just lushly sexy) in a voice low and sultry and (here’s the crux) indulgently self-absorbed. Her peek-a-boo privacies brushed away Clegg’s public exhibit of cross-cultural rhythm and made Johnston’s aw-shucks sentimentality blush; her guitar gooks conjured a likelier dreamland than Baerwald’s embroidered blues.
So what, if as Germano’s detractors argue, she sings perfumed emotion, not actual songs? Against the generalized silly backdrop of hit radio, perfumed emotion this thick feels as rebelliously loud to me as Robert Plant zapped by electrodes use to. And rebelliously loud still, after all these years, is how things ought to sound.
Featured Image: Lisa Germano (Photo: Pamela Springsteen)
