By Vic Garbarini
Musician | September 1993
Call it bungee-jumping into the underworld. On her first major-label release, John Mellencamp violinist Lisa Germano plunges into that abyss of misery, alienation and screwed-up relationships we all know and love. But instead of getting mired in or mesmerized by despair, she instinctively works through it. When she berates herself or strays towards self-pity, as on the title cut, humor and insight lift her music’s dark center of gravity to a new plateau. “Give it up / Try again / Ain’t life fun?” she wryly drones, then adds in her breathy, self-mocking groan, “C’mon, everybody, let’s… sing!”
Actually, her songs are quite singable, though Germano’s skewed melodies and arrangements have more in common with Mellencamp’s surreal, expressionistic paintings—and his world view—than with his sound. (Imagine a cross between Nico and Chrissie Hynde fronting the Velvets in, say, Bulgaria.) More a texturalist than a virtuoso, Germano weaves bittersweet Eastern tonalities through the chords in ways that echo her emotional revelations. “What a waste to feel the way I feel / While happiness is just around the corner,” she confides in “Around the World,” the album’s manifesto of sorts. It’s an attitude that allows her the flexibility to laugh at demons, then chase them out of her head—or bed—in songs as sonically distant as the wistful, folky “Cowboy” and the grunge-rock of “Puppet.” Not to slight “You Make Me Want to Wear Dresses,” a cautionary tale about the almost addictive temptation to lose, rather than find, yourself in a love affair. Like the rest of Happiness, it’s a song that could only have been written by a woman compelled to grope towards the resolution she senses beyond her angst.
