Slush

A record made with my friends from Giant Sand and Calexico. Very fun + experimental for us on V2. Available?? Don’t know.

Slush occupies a singular and somewhat anomalous position in Lisa Germano’s catalogue—neither a solo record nor a straightforward guest appearance, but something rarer: a genuine creative partnership born out of mutual curiosity and a shared instinct for restraint. Released on February 25, 1997, under the name OP8, the album brought together Germano with Giant Sand’s Howe Gelb, Joey Burns, and John Convertino for a record that was warmly received by critics and beloved by fans of all four artists. Spooky, mostly hushed, and shot through with flashes of jazz, desert-rock, and classic pop—Slush was, by any measure, one of the more quietly remarkable records of its year

Background

The album’s origins lie in an ambitious (and ultimately abandoned) idea by 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell. In the mid-1990s, Watts-Russell approached a number of the label’s artists with a proposal: each act would find another musician or band to collaborate with on three songs, which would be released monthly as a series of EPs, later compiled into a year-end collection. Germano, then coming off Excerpts from a Love Circus, was among the artists who responded enthusiastically, and she reached out to Giant Sand, a band she already knew and admired.

Germano and the Giant Sand recorded their three songs together at Wavelab in Tucson, Arizona. But Watts-Russell ultimately found many of the resulting recordings unsatisfactory and scrapped the entire EP series. By that point, however, the four musicians had discovered they worked exceptionally well together and were reluctant to leave it at three tracks.

The resulting album was released as an OP8 record, a banner Gelb had long envisioned as a revolving-door collaboration project with different featured artists. Germano’s billing as a “guest” rather than a full co-lead was a late decision, one that reflected the group’s desire to honor the OP8 concept even as it obscured how central her contributions truly were.

“(Giant Sand’s) manager and my manager got together and found a record deal and got [Thirsty Ear Records] to pay 4AD whatever it cost to do those three songs. And then we went in and did the rest of [Slush] in four days. (Giant Sand) had always had this idea to be OP8, and every time they were OP8, they’d have a guest artist. So even though I started the project by asking them to join me, when we went in to finish the record, we decided that it should be OP8, with Lisa Germano as a guest.”

— Lisa Germano, Magnet Magazine (August, 1998)

Slush was released through Thirsty Ear in the US and licensed to V2 Music for international distribution. Despite critical acclaim, it did not perform commercially. Burns and Convertino’s other ongoing project, Calexico, had launched that same year and increasingly demanded their focus. Gelb continued forward with Giant Sand, and Germano relocated from Indiana to Southern California to begin recording what would become Slide. The OP8 collaboration ended after a single album, though Gelb later briefly considered reviving the project with Juliana Hatfield, following her guest appearance on Giant Sand’s 2000 album Chore of Enchantment, an idea he ultimately set aside.

In 1997, MTV invited the band to perform songs from Slush on Alternative Nation, giving Germano welcome exposure to a broader American audience.

Themes

Slush draws its character from the intersection of two very different artistic sensibilities. Germano’s three contributions—”If I Think of Love,” “It’s a Rainbow,” and “Tom, Dick & Harry”—bring her trademark intimate songwriting into a more open, collaborative sonic space. Where her solo records often turned inward to the point of claustrophobia, these tracks feel almost airy by comparison, anchored in melody and accessible pop structure even as Germano’s characteristic emotional undercurrents run beneath the surface. Writing for Musician magazine in 1998, critic Jon Young noted that “If I Think of Love” at first seems deceptively simple—”perfect for your favorite pinhead diva”—but takes longer to reveal the bitterness tucked inside its lyrics.

Gelb’s contributions pull in a contrasting direction: loose and desert-weathered, with an affinity for the surreal and the oblique. “Leather” and “Cracklin’ Water” are among his most atmospheric work, the latter building a meditation on ambivalence—”I want you now / If this is not hate”—across six slow minutes that several critics cited as the album’s emotional high point.

The two covers anchor the record historically. The opening track, “Sand,” written by Lee Hazlewood and first recorded with Suzi Jane Hokom in 1966 before becoming associated with the Nancy Sinatra collaboration, is reimagined here as a duet between Germano and Gelb—their voices interweaving over muted percussion, organ, and Germano’s violin in a way that invites comparisons to the Sinatra/Hazlewood dynamic while remaining entirely their own. The closing track, Neil Young’s “Round and Round,” chosen from Young’s quieter, more contemplative register, extends the album’s sense of graceful, unhurried drift.

Throughout, the songwriting tends to favor mood over narrative, with lyrical themes of longing, desire, and resignation filtering through the record’s overall air of wistful strangeness.

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No.	Title	Length
1	Sand	4:39
2	Lost in Space	4:08
3	If I Think of Love	3:17
4	Leather	6:05
5	It’s a Rainbow	4:09
6	OP8	4:46
7	Cracklin’ Water	6:31
8	Never See it Coming	4:06
9	Tom, Dick & Harry	4:22
10	The Devil Loves L.A.	4:03
11	Round and Round	6:21

The bulk of Slush was recorded at Wavelab studio in Tucson, Arizona, the natural home turf of Giant Sand and a facility whose intimacy and character suited the album’s loosely collaborative spirit. Engineers Craig Schumacher and Nick Luca oversaw the sessions. Production credit was shared between the four musicians collectively as OP8 and Germano.

Three tracks—”If I Think of Love,” “Cracklin’ Water,” and “Round and Round”—were mixed separately by Paul Mahern and Germano at Echo Park Recordings Studio in Bloomington, Indiana, giving those tracks a slightly different textural character from the rest of the album, which was mixed by OP8. The album was mastered by Duncan Stanbury at Master Cutting Room in New York City.

The core album was completed in approximately four days of recording sessions, following the initial three-track collaboration for the aborted 4AD EP project. The speed of the process is audible in the album’s live, unguarded feel—musicians trading ideas rather than constructing arrangements. Germano played violin, piano, mandolin, and vocals; Gelb contributed guitar, piano, and vocals; Burns added bass, cello, guitar, and vocals; and Convertino held down the rhythmic centre on drums. The layering of string instruments—particularly Germano’s violin and Burns’ cello—lends the album a richness that distinguishes it from a typical alt-country record.

Packaging & Design

The front cover of Slush features a textured, layered design described by the French music site Culturesco as “baroque”—attributed to designer Mark Droescher, who is credited for the artwork in the liner notes. The front face prominently displays the billing “OP8 featuring the ilk of Lisa Germano,” a phrase that has become as associated with the album as its music.

The standard jewel case edition includes a 4-page inlay booklet with credits and photographs. The interior booklet features a photo of Gelb, Burns, and Convertino wearing grotesque masks, with a separate image of Germano positioned above them—a playful visual that reflects the album’s billing and the group’s irreverent sensibility. The disc itself carries standard Thirsty Ear design with catalogue number THI 57030.2.

No vinyl edition was released in 1997 or in the years following. The V2 UK and European pressing carried catalogue number VVR1000332, distributed through 3MV/Vital in the UK, Sony Music in Germany and Austria, Rough Trade in Scandinavia, and Record Services in Ireland. Some copies of the V2 edition include a sticker on the jewel case reading “Featuring Howe Gelb, John Convertino, Joey Burns & Lisa Germano.”

Video

Personnel

Lisa Germano: violin, piano, mandolin, vocals
|Howe Gelb: guitar, piano, vocals
Joey Burns: bass, cello, guitar, vocals
John Convertino: drums

Produced by OP8 and Lisa Germano

Recorded at Wavelab, Tucson, Arizona
Engineered by Craig Schumacher and Nick Luca

Mixed by OP8: tracks 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10
Mixed by Paul Mahern and Lisa Germano at Echo Park Recordings Studio, Bloomington, Indiana: tracks 3, 7, 11

Mastered by Duncan Stanbury at Master Cutting Room, New York City

“Sand” written by Lee Hazlewood
Published by Granite Music Corp., ASCAP)

“Lost in Space” written by Joey Burns
Published by Lunada Bay Music, BMI; administered by Bug Music)

“If I Think of Love,” “It’s a Rainbow,” “Tom, Dick & Harry” written by Lisa Germano
Published by Songs of PolyGram International, Inc. / Door Number One Music / Emotional Wench Music, BMI)

“Leather,” “Cracklin’ Water,” “The Devil Loves L.A.” written by Howe Gelb
Published by Amazing Black Sand Music, BMI; administered by Bug Music)

“OP8” written by Howe Gelb, Joey Burns, John Convertino
“Never See It Coming” written by Howe Gelb and Joey Burns

“Round and Round” written by Neil Young
Published by Ten East Music / Springalo Tunes / Cotillion Music / Richie Furay Music, BMI)

Critical Reception

Slush arrived to a warm critical response, praised for the complementary chemistry between Germano and her collaborators and for the album’s restrained, atmospheric production. Reviewers noted the natural fit between Germano’s intimate, emotionally direct style and Giant Sand’s unhurried, desert-inflected approach—while some observed that the album’s occasional detours into lo-fi instrumental territory were less successful than its more song-focused moments. In 1997, MTV invited the band to perform several tracks on Alternative Nation, one of the more notable pieces of US media coverage the record received.

Though Slush did not perform commercially, it has grown in reputation over the years, and is frequently cited as a highlight of both Germano’s and Giant Sand’s respective catalogues.

The cover reads “OP8 featuring the ilk of Lisa Germano,” and on the surface, Slush is simply a collaboration between Arizona’s Giant Sand (aka OP8) and L.A.-based singer/songwriter (and part-time Eel) Germano. More than just a mostly successful merging of musical minds, the album also serves as a convenient — and accessible — introduction to the sometimes-more-difficult/darker work these artists have done elsewhere, as Giant Sand, Calexico, Howe Gelb solo, and of course, Germano solo. The concept works best when Gelb and Germano, both fine and distinctive singers in their own right, take over the vocal duties. When the more understated Joey Burns (Calexico) sings, however, as on “Lost in Space,” the momentum falters a bit. Fortunately, such instances are rare. Germano’s “If I Think of Love,” for instance, is an especially pretty pop song (and considerably more upbeat than her usual neo-gothic fare), whereas the delirious cover of “Sand,” which opens the recording, is so exquisite as to make up for the occasional dull or listless patch. Germano and Gelb are — or were, at any rate — the ideal postmodern Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra. The dreamy version of Neil Young’s “Round and Round,” which brings things to a close, is also worthy of note. Sadly, Slush turned out to be a one-off project, much like Polly Jean Harvey and John Parish’s Dance Hall at Louse Point, which was released the previous year. And that isn’t as random a comparison as it may seem, since all of these artists (Gelb, Harvey, et al.) have collaborated with each other at one time or another. Well, one can always hope for a reunion of at least some of them.

 — Kathleen C. Fennessy, All Music

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