Lisa Germano

The singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist resurfaces with a revision of her alluring songs for shipwrecked souls

By Sheba White & Kara Pound
Published: October 5th, 2007 | 11:09am

When Lisa Germano’s Lullaby for Liquid Pig was initially released in 2003, critics were already used to the murky musical depths of the prolific singer-songwriter. By this sixth album, they soon found themselves submerged in her quiet darkness.With its whispery vocals and intimate lyrics, Lullaby for Liquid Pig feels like Germano is telling you a secret that nobody else knows, but these secrets, although alluring, aren’t necessarily comfortable to hear.

Liquid Pig was written largely as an exercise in what Germano has previously termed her “drowning period.” The album is a direct conversation about her addictions and took her dreamy vocal qualities to eerie, intimate levels — far beyond the John Mellencamp, Lilith Fair, and Mazzy Star associations she was accustomed to receiving — and pushed her firmly into Beth Orton–Cat Power territory.

“I saw it as a person that just needed too much: ‘I need water, I need love, I need alcohol, I need stuff,’” a surprisingly upbeat Germano explains of the themed title from her California home. “Instead of saying ‘I need to love myself and see what’s going on in here,’ and ‘I’m such a pig for it.’ They’re not dealing quite yet with what they need, because they need so much from the outside.”

Germano seemed to have hit her stride with Liquid Pig by, in essence, addressing the raw, intense emotional damage done after years of struggling with personal and professional demons. Indeed, Liquid Pig was critically lauded specifically for its too-close-for-comfort vocals, which came to the forefront with this release.

“I have a really hard time singing,” Germano explains. “People say that it feels like I’m singing into their ears. That’s because the only way I can record and hear my own vocals is to have headphones on and have the mic very, very close. It’s very intimate and it’s very sincere.”

Despite critical praise — precisely for its sincerity and intimacy — the album was shelved soon after release when the record label folded. Germano, by this point a vet of label issues, soon moved on to other projects, making six more albums, adding her expertise in violin, guitar, and piano to others’ tracks, and continuing her collaborations with everyone from David Bowie and Calexico to Neil Finn and Patty Griffin.

It wasn’t until Germano signed with Michael Gira’s Young God Records that Liquid Pig was revisited. “He was originally going to put Liquid Pig out,” says Germano. The “music bullshit” of the L.A. scene distracted her she explains, and she went with another label. “He was really cool about it. He just said, ‘Well, contact me if you make another record.’”

After the release of the equally praised In the Maybe World, which Young God released in 2006, Gira encouraged Germano to re-examine Liquid Pig. Germano added live tracks, home-recording sessions, and demo outtakes to the initial release, and 20-song bonus CD was born. The album was released by Young God in June 2007.

With the re-release, Germano seems to have surfaced above the watery personal circumstances surrounding the initial release, and her expectations appear firmly grounded. “I just know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea,” Germano says, referring to the possible reception four years later. “If they listen to it thinking, ‘Oh, poor little Lisa Germano’…well, I would never put out a record that I would want people to listen to and say ‘poor Lisa.’ It only works if it relates to you. If you want to give it a chance that’s cool and if you don’t then that’s cool, too.”