By Christopher Waters
October 11, 1998
This article was leveraged from an online source. The exact date and source are not clearly identified or confirmed.
Lisa Germano has come a long way from her days playing in John Cougar Mellencamp’s backing band. A long way from sold-out stadium shows and roars of approval. But it’s doubtful that the gifted multi-instrumentalist misses the tumultuous second hand applause received trotting out “Pink Houses” for the umpteenth time. When people applaud her now, the singer/songwriter knows she can take all the credit. Like Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, she’s the only one there.
She describes her newly released album, Slide, as a “pretty record” and hopes aloud that “there’s room for that somewhere” in the music industry. Distributed by Polygram in Canada, Slide was delayed for almost a year while 4AD, no longer with Warner Bros., searched for a new distributor. Germano’s records over the past decade haven’t been released so much as set adrift to wander in search of like minds. It’s not that she’s looking to be rescued, although sometimes you get the sense she could use some company. The music she records is more a friendly beacon sent out to others, a gentle reminder than entertains her listeners and lets them know they’re not alone.
“It’s the same old thing, but happier. Hopefully it’ll keep going that way.” – Lisa Germano
Having built a career out of soul-searching pop ballads that are passionate and frank self-portraits, Germano says she wasn’t about to change her tune this time around. “It’s the same old thing, but it’s happier. It’s called Slide because it’s about trying to get out of this bad place and going to a better place… and you can really see that better place in this record. Hopefully it’ll keep going that way.”
Prior to Slide, Germano’s most recent foray in recordings was a featured guest of Giant Sand-offshoot, OP8. She contributed four songs to the project, including “If I Think Of Love,” which she reworked to include on her new record.
It wasn’t the first time that Germano has adapted her recordings. She actually released her debut album, Happiness twice. First for Capitol, and then again for 4AD, which signed Germano as an artist after an ill-timed corporate shake-up at Capitol shortly after her album was released in 1993.
“I saw the demise of my whole record,” says Germano, who remembers the uncertainly surrounding her meeting with new label boss, Gary Gersh. “Without saying so, the new president said, ‘I really don’t like you or your music.’ And I said, also without saying so, ‘I really hate big labels and I don’t like you either.’
“So in a very nice way, he said, ‘Your record is getting some good reviews. We would really like you to take it somewhere else if you want.'” Free to find a new home, Germano called 4AD founder Watts-Russell, who had talked to Germano’s management about obtaining the rights to release Happiness in the UK. Watts-Russell says he was happy to get the album and ecstatic to get the artist as well. Happiness was re-modelled, then re-released internationally by 4AD in 1994. Albums Geek The Girl, Excerpts from the Love Circus and now Slide have built on that foundation and established Germano as an enticing songwriter who has only flirted with the pop charts, never gone steady.
“She’s Lisa,” Watts-Russell says with obvious admiration. “Her personality is in her records. She creates a little world of her own that I think those that hear her have a lot of affection for. But that one track that gets on the radio is evasive.”
Coming over to 4AD, Germano says she wasn’t sure where she fit on a label roster that, at that time, included ancient-rock ensemble Dead Can Dance, power pop group Pixies and swirling Brit-pop outfit Lush. “As a label, it does so many different things, it’s funny that people pigeonhole 4AD as this atmospheric label. Sometimes, in the past, I’ve thought maybe I don’t belong on the label, but that’s not true.”
“Ivo’s musical tastes are very wide. There’s something similar to everything 4AD releases – there is some sort of cohesive thing there somewhere.”
