LISA GERMANO - In The Maybe World

Lisa Germano and Michael Gira. Two destinies crossing paths in the inscrutable indie galaxy.

United by being two of the greatest, most misunderstood geniuses in rock history (one makes ends meet working as a bookshop clerk, the other tellingly titled the celebratory anthology of his band "Various Failures"), the Indiana singer-songwriter and the former leader of Swans meet at the studios of Young God, the label he owns.

And it's love at first sight, because she's looking for a label that will support her complete artistic freedom, while he wants to add his favorite artist to the roster alongside the likes of Devendra Banhart, Akron Family, Mi and L'Au & co. The result is an album that renews the enchantment of a by-now "classic" sound, yet never feels predictable or mannered.

"In The Maybe World" is a jumble of memories, flashbacks and confessions in the typical style of Germano's beloved sleepwalking soliloquy. Twelve short songs (almost all around three minutes) forming a dreamlike delirium narrated in a hushed voice, with muted arrangements, minimal yet eclectic, thanks to constant unexpected grafts and variations.

The piano brushes in the melodic lines, dotted by the odd sparse guitar phrase, Sebastian Steinberg's bass and Patrick Warren's pump organ. The violin's spectral hisses provide counterpoint, and together with cello and xylophone weave a subtly disorienting fabric. Germano plays almost everything, singing and whispering her eternal-child nursery rhyme right into the listener's ear, lost in the labyrinth of her phobias.

Compared to the alien soundscapes of the previous "Lullaby For A Liquid Pig", songwriting has taken center stage in the compositional approach, pushing the atmospheric element into the background.

Melodies and choruses are thus foregrounded, but there's no shortage of the usual knack for surprising the listener with a single chime, a tremor, a hint of distortion.

And it's magic right from the opening lullaby of "The Day", almost a parable of the cycle of life condensed into a single day ("It's a sunrise/ It's a sunset/ It's the memory of the onset/ of a lifetime full of wonder/ and the constant falling under"). The newfound awareness of the beauty of life and acceptance of death lends a glimmer of serenity to the desperate Lisa of "Geek The Girl".

But as early as the second track, “Too Much Space”, the sound swells with sadness and regret: a thread of voice embroiders the gorgeous melody over soft piano phrases, with violin moaning in the half-light. Spine-tingling stuff.

Between modern soul and dreamy reveries, the album moves through the shyest of elegies (“Moon In Hell”, “After Monday”), deathly sighs (“Into Oblivion”), enchanted music boxes (“Golden Cities”, “A Seed”), and para-ambient pieces (the title track, built on bells, acoustic guitar and faint electronic percussion).

The classically-trained musician instead carves out the sonata of “In The Land Of Faeries”, with piano reverberating obsessively into a pneumatic void and vocals that have never sounded so ethereal. Almost a chamber-music version of the Cocteau Twins.

When the piano exits the scene, there's also room for folk watercolors (“Wire”) or lethargic psych ballads in the Mazzy Star mold (“Red Thread”, with its disarming chorus “Go to hell/ Fuck you/ I love you”).

“Except For The Ghosts”, meanwhile, is a tribute to Jeff Buckley.

A songbook charged with high emotional voltage, then, full of stories of life and death, love and loss, hope and desolation. An existentialism that also takes shape in small everyday dramas (the death of the cat in “Golden Cities”, the father's surgery in “Too Much Space”).

“In The Maybe World” is an elusive album, monochrome only in appearance. Pauses are rare, but the small discoveries make it more seductive with every listen. A music box to be unwrapped with care, absolutely off-limits to distracted or hurried listeners.

At 48, with more than fifteen years of records behind her, Lisa Germano still has plenty to say and to teach.

In the "maybe world", that's the only certainty.

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30/06/2006