Released in 1995, Cry Wolf was the promotional single selected by 4AD to support Geek the Girl, released the previous October. No commercial version was ever issues—it circulated exclusively as a US promo CD. What makes it unusually substantial for a promotional release is the depth of its tracklist, including an edited version of the title track, two album remixes, and an original non-album composition making its first appearance anywhere. For a single whose sole purpose was radio and press servicing, it functions as a companion piece to the album in its own right.
Background
Geek the Girl was the record that solidified Germano’s critical reputation. Produced by Germano and Malcolm Burn, it was largely home-recorded, with four tracks receiving additional drums from Kenny Aronoff and Burn-era production treatment at Echo Park Studio in Bloomington, Indiana. The album arrived just six months after the 4AD reissue of Happiness and demonstrated a radical deepening of Germano’s artistic focus—quieter, more intimate, and considerably more unsettling. Spin would later place it 84th among the best albums of the 1990s, and its title track 91st on their list of the 100 best alternative rock songs of the decade.
“Cry Wolf” occupied the fifth track position on the album, sitting in immediate sequence before “…A Psychopath”—together forming, as Spectrum Culture described it, a kind of mid-album trilogy exploring consent. Its selection as the single’s lead track was natural: among the album’s most conventionally structured songs, it also carried the most explicit thematic declaration of the album’s central concerns.
The single was accompanied by a music video, one of the few promotional videos produced for Germano’s 4AD period. The song also featured in the soundtrack of the 2003 film Rain.
Themes
“Cry Wolf” addresses date rape—or more precisely, the systematic dismissal and delegitimization of the victim’s account of it. The title works as a double meaning: the accusation leveled at the victim (that she is crying wolf, fabricating or exaggerating her account), and the wolves themselves, the people who assault and the systems that protect them. Germano doesn’t narrate from a position of indignation; she inhabits the circular logic used to silence victims, voicing the accusations as if they have their own internal coherence.
Trouser Press described the song as “a searing analysis of date rape dispensed with Twin Peaks-like eeriness,” which captures the mode well. The subject matter is treated not with protest rhetoric but with the unsettling calm of someone who has lived inside the logic being described.
Released: 1995
Label: 4AD
Format: CD
Catalog No: PRO-CD-7347
Country: US
Availability: Rare
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cry Wolf (Edit) | 4:07 |
| 2 | The Mirror is Gone | 2:41 |
| 3 | Cancer of Everything (Remix) | 3:44 |
| 4 | Sexy Little Girl Princess (Remix) | 3:45 |
Most of Geek the Girl was recorded by Germano alone at home, in the characteristic home-studio mode that gave the album its hushed, demo-adjacent intimacy. “Cry Wolf” is among the four tracks mixed (and partly recorded) at Echo Park Studio by Malcolm Burn, with Kenny Aronoff contributing drums. This positions it among the album’s more produced tracks, though “produced” is a relative term on a record whose deliberate roughness was itself a compositional statement.
The single presents an edited version of the track at 4:07, trimmed from the album’s 4:59 runtime. The two remixes of “Cancer of Everything” and “Sexy Little Girl Princess” are listed without specific production or engineering credits on the single itself, but both originate from the Echo Park/Burn production context. The Rate Your Music reviewer of the single specifically called out the “Sexy Little Girl Princess” remix as an improvement on the album cut—faster-paced, and arguably more immediate.
“The Mirror Is Gone” was produced by Malcolm Burn, and Trouser Press identifies it as a leftover from the Happiness sessions, placing its composition and recording in the 1992–1993 period, before Geek the Girl was conceived. That it sat unreleased for two-plus years before appearing on this single, and that it was deemed strong enough for Germano’s most prominent compilation placement in 1995, speaks to the quality of the track relative to the sessions that produced it.
Of the four tracks on this single, “The Mirror Is Gone” has had the most complex release history. Its first appearance was here, in 1995—simultaneously on this promo and on Red Hot + Bothered: The Indie Rock Guide to Dating, a compilation released on Kinetic Records (distributed by Reprise) in 1995, produced by Paul Heck for the Red Hot Organization.
The track then remained in circulation primarily through collectors and Germano devotees until 2025, when it was officially incorporated into Geek the Girl: 30th Anniversary Special Edition as the album’s final track, its first appearance in a permanent album context. The Discogs entry for that release notes that it “closes the album beautifully,” and the inclusion gave “The Mirror Is Gone” the canonical album placement it had been denied for thirty years.
Packaging & Design
The single’s cover features a painting by Cynthia von Buhler. At the time of its release, von Buhler was a central figure in the Boston independent arts scene — painter, illustrator, performer, and record label co-founder whose work moved across fine art, illustration, and music with equal fluency. She studied at the Art Institute of Boston and Richmond University in London, and by the mid-1990s her work was appearing regularly in publications including The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and The New York Times. The Boston Phoenix, which featured her so regularly it eventually called her its unofficial mascot, described her as the queen of the Boston indie scene. Her visual work made her an apt choice for an album whose cover imagery (the Dominic Davies porcelain doll photographs for the main release) was similarly invested in the aesthetics of the disturbing-familiar.
The Cry Wolf single is the only Germano release to feature von Buhler’s work. The painting on the cover is listed in the existing personnel section simply as “Cover painting by Cynthia von Buhler” with no title for the work noted.
Personnel
“Cry Wolf” (Edit) Written by Lisa Germano, Jay Joyce, and Malcolm Burn Published by Songs of Polygram International / Door No. 1 / Emotional Wench Music BMI; Jay Joyce Music / Left On Base BMI (Jay Joyce); Neeha Music ASCAP (Malcolm Burn)
“The Mirror Is Gone” Written by Lisa Germano Produced by Malcolm Burn Published by Songs of Polygram International / Emotional Wench Music BMI
“Cancer of Everything” (Remix) Written by Lisa Germano Published by Songs of Polygram International / Emotional Wench Music BMI
“Sexy Little Girl Princess” (Remix) Written by Lisa Germano and Malcolm Burn Published by Songs of Polygram International / Emotional Wench Music BMI; Neeha Music ASCAP (Malcolm Burn)
Cover painting by Cynthia von Buhler
Geek the Girl produced by Lisa Germano and Malcolm Burn Drums on “Cry Wolf”: Kenny Aronoff Drums and guitar on “Sexy Little Girl Princess”: Malcolm Burn Mixed at Echo Park Studio, Bloomington, Indiana Mastered by Greg Calbi at Masterdisk
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