Lullaby for Liquid Pig

Ok I give up. Too hard to trust people. Stay alone and LOVE your addictions. Always there. NOT A GOOD WAY TO LIVE. So…?

Released in April 2003 on Ineffable/iMusic (a joint venture with ARTISTdirect) and later reissued in 2007 by Michael Gira’s Young God Records with a bonus disc of live and home-recorded material, Lullaby for Liquid Pig is Lisa Germano’s sixth studio album and her first new recording since departing the 4AD label. The album is hushed, slow-moving, and heartbreakingly intimate—an after-hours reflection on addiction, emotional paralysis, and fragile hope.

Background

After the release of Slide in 1998, Germano had largely stepped away from the music business, working at a bookstore in Los Angeles while quietly writing at home late at night. The songs that became Lullaby for Liquid Pig took shape over the course of roughly three years, without a label, without money, and without any certainty that they would ever be released. What emerged was one of her most acclaimed and emotionally concentrated works—thirty minutes of piano-led dream-folk that some fans found so troubling they sent Germano Bibles and self-help materials after hearing it.

Following disappointing sales of Slide on 4AD, Germano found herself dropped from the label and adrift in the industry. She returned to Los Angeles and took a job at Book Soup, an independent bookstore on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, where she had worked on and off for several years. She described the period as a necessary retreat from the pressures of touring and recording, and later said she had considered leaving music altogether. In a 2003 interview with In Music We Trust, she recalled living a stripped-down existence: no publishing, no advances, just working at the bookstore and coming home to write at night.

Despite what was widely reported as a vow to never release another record, Germano couldn’t stop writing. The songs accumulated slowly over roughly three years, and when the album was finished, she sent it to a handful of people with no particular plan beyond possibly selling it on the internet. One of those people was Tony Berg, a veteran A&R executive who had founded Ineffable Records and was a regular customer at Book Soup. Berg called back immediately and wanted to release it. When his label was slow to get off the ground, Germano suggested he speak with Marc Geiger at ARTISTdirect about a joint venture. The deal came together quickly, and Lullaby for Liquid Pig became Ineffable’s debut release.

Germano spent nearly the entire advance from the deal on veterinary bills for her ailing cat Miamo-Tutti, who had fallen seriously ill. Her sick cat also forced her to cancel a planned tour with Neil Finn, whose band she had been playing with for the previous two years. Finn, she said, was wholly supportive of the decision. The album’s release was met with some of the strongest critical attention of Germano’s career, though commercial success remained elusive. The ARTISTdirect label folded not long after, and the album went out of print until Gira’s Young God Records reissued it in 2007 as a two-disc set with a bonus CD of home recordings and live material from Lisbon and LA’s Largo Club.

Themes

Germano initially believed Lullaby for Liquid Pig was an album about alcohol. In early interviews, she discussed it in those terms—a record born of sarcastic self-examination about her relationship with wine, about the defiant impulse to be left alone with one’s habits. The title track itself originated as a love song about a man, but she came to realize that the feeling of needing someone’s energy, of the world being intolerable without them, was identical to the pull of a drink. The two kinds of dependency became interchangeable across the album’s twelve songs.

“You don’t listen to Lullaby for Liquid Pig with other people in the room. You listen to it alone. I love this record, but it doesn’t work when you listen to it with others. I don’t think it works unless you’re alone.”

Over time, and through the process of discussing the record in interviews, Germano revised her own understanding of the material. Speaking with In Music We Trust several months after release, she explained that the album was ultimately less about alcohol than about behavior—of intensely lonely people who don’t understand why they’re lonely, who are prone to addiction not because of any single substance but because of a fundamental need that isn’t being met. She noted that only four songs dealt directly with alcohol; the rest addressed the broader patterns of seeking comfort in people, habits, or illusions. She even considered calling the album “Alcoholics Anonymous” at one point, thinking it might help people in recovery, before realizing that wasn’t what the record was really about.

The album operates as a song cycle, with themes and melodic fragments introduced early and woven throughout. The superficially brighter songs often carry the most danger—”Candy,” with its hazy, looping textures, and “It’s Party Time,” a piece of broken bubblegum pop, both evoke the seductive oblivion of sinking into a narcotic cocoon. Conversely, the album’s closing stretch offers unexpected warmth. “Into the Night,” with its waltz-like strings, and the brief “…To Dream” suggest that some kind of resolution remains possible, even if only barely. The album’s famous closing lines plead for perseverance with an almost unbearable fragility.

Germano was emphatic that the record demanded solitary listening. She described it as music that didn’t function in the presence of others—it needed to be experienced alone, in private, to work. This quality—the sense that you are overhearing something not meant for an audience—may explain why the album inspired such intense personal responses from listeners, including the Bibles and self-help books that arrived in her mail after its release. For Germano, the reaction confirmed that her work was reaching people, even if it sometimes reached them in ways she hadn’t intended. As she put it to In Music We Trust, her records were made for people looking in from the outside, not looking out from the inside.

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No.	Title	Length
1	Nobody’s Playing	3:10
2	Paper Doll	3:02
3	Liquid Pig	3:03
4	Pearls	3:24
5	Candy	2:36
6	Dream Glasses Off	3:28
7	From a Shell	2:59
8	It’s Party Time	2:40
9	All the Pretty Lies	3:08
10	Lullaby for Liquid Pig	3:09
11	Into the Night	4:03
12	…To Dream	1:55

Lullaby for Liquid Pig was recorded almost entirely in Germano’s Los Angeles home, a process that had become her standard working method by this point in her career. She worked alone, typically late at night, building songs around piano and voice. In a 2003 interview with Under the Radar, she confirmed that none of the basic tracks were recorded in a conventional studio, with the exception of two songs tracked at her friend Craig Ross’s home in Austin roughly two and a half years before the album was completed.

Because finances prevented bringing musicians together in person, Germano transferred her home recordings to ProTools and sent tracks remotely to collaborators. Johnny Marr engineered and played guitar on “Paper Doll.” Neil Finn contributed to “Into the Night” from his home studio—a process Germano later described as one of the few genuinely wonderful things about the digital world, the ability to send files to someone in New Zealand and get them back with something beautiful added. Wendy Melvoin, formerly of Prince’s band and Wendy & Lisa, also contributed. Former Eels drummer Butch played on the record as well.

The album was co-produced by Germano with Joey Waronker and Jamie Candiloro, who also mixed the album together. Candiloro’s role was primarily as a sound architect—Germano would bring him raw recordings with considerable hiss and lo-fi imperfections, and together they would decide what to keep and what to clean up. In the Under the Radar interview, Germano described the transformation of the title track as an example of the process: the final version bears little resemblance to the original home recording, having gone through multiple rounds of adding and removing layers, with even the original piano eventually being replaced. The album was mastered by Greg Calbi. Artwork was created by Paul McMenamin, with photography by Matthew Welch—the same team Germano later praised in interviews for their vision on the album sleeve’s visual design.

The production has a ghostly, gauze-like quality—reverberant and intimate, with piano as the dominant instrument, accompanied by odd keyboard textures, violin, mandolin, and occasional guitar. Guest contributions are so seamlessly woven into the fabric of the album that, as one reviewer noted, they are nearly impossible to identify without consulting the liner notes.

Additional Versions

	Label	Format	Catalog No.	Country	Year
	Ineffable iMusic	CD Advance Promo	imadv-01117-2	US	2002
	Artist Direct	CD Advance Promp	None	US	2002
	iMusic	CD	IMUCD117	Europe	2003
	Ineffable iMusic BMG	CD Digipak	80119-01117-2	US	2003
	Young God	2-CD Reissue Digipak	YG36	US	2007

Press Release

Already lauded by such artists as Peter Gabriel, Neil Finn, and David Bowie for her beautiful and groundbreaking music, Lisa Germano offers her most daring album to date as her debut on the Ineffable/iMusic label. Scheduled for release in early April, Lullaby for Liquid Pig combines exquisite, unsettling tracks with lyrics whose blunt honesty is rare even among the most adventurous songwriters. Though enhanced by contributions from Finn, Johnny Marr, Wendy Melvoin, former Eels drummer Butch, and co-producers Joey Waronker and Jamie Candiloro, Lullaby for Liquid Pig is really one person’s chronicle—sometimes harrowing, sometimes seductive—of a battle with demons.

Packaging & Design

Personnel

“Paper Doll” engineered by Johnny Marr
“Into the Night” engineered by Neil Finn

Produced by Jamie Candiloro, Joey Waronker and Lisa Germano

Executive produced by Betty and Rocco Germano
Mixed by Jamie Candiloro and Joey Waronker
Mastered by Greg Calbi

All songs written by Lisa Germano

Artwork by Paul McMenamin
Photography by Matthew Welch

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