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Lisa Germano | Lullaby for Liquid Pig | Review
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Chatanooga Pulse | Ernie Paikone of her most cohesive effortsThe "liquid pig" in the title of Lisa Germano's sixth album from 2003 is a not-so-flattering, self-imposed pet name, referring to her questionable drinking habits, and once again, Germano dives headfirst into uneasy, intensely personal moments, bringing up a difficult question. Would Germano be who she is if she didn't drink? She's stated in a Salon interview that she owes her voice‹sultry, breathy, yet full‹to cigarettes and wine, and the topic of dependencies certainly dominates her songwriting on this album. But her music also provides a confessional, possibly therapeutic release. It's all very confusing, leaving the listener to wonder if she's made peace or if one should be worried about her. Lullaby for Liquid Pig is Germano's second most troubling album (behind Geek the Girl) and one of her most cohesive efforts, with warm and compelling arrangements, using carefully placed layers of piano, violin, guitar, static and background noise accompanying her voice. The woozy "Liquid Pig" is a spacey, trippy number that stumbles along with some squealing guitar interjections and fuzzed-out vocals, with sounds wobbling between the left and right channels, making a convincing aural facsimile of a wine buzz. The......
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Lisa Germano | Review
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Nuvo Magazine, Indianapolis, Indiana | Leslie Bensonthe fairy tale bringerSimilar to how Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm cultivated Germanic folklore in the 1800s ‹ fairy tales tinged with seedy truths ‹ singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Lisa Germano bleeds lyrical shadows behind the veil of dreamy songs. "I want my own music to be in a fairy tale, a mythical place," she says. "Some of the messages might be kind of sad, but they're easier to take [in such a context]." Singing like a wispy, cracked ballet dancer in a child's musical jewelry box, Germano brings darkness on fluttering wings over piano melodies. Incessant guitar and splattered flute pieces resound beneath intimate vocals, yet, her violin is the instrument most closely relating to the raw underbelly of her songs. It aches and creaks on "A Seed" (In the Maybe World, 2006), urging her subject to just "let the love go." And the most polite "f*** you" insult you could ever imagine is repeated on "Red Thread" from that same album. "[My family] wishes I wrote happier music," Germano says. But since 2003's Lullaby for Liquid Pig, which Young God Records will reissue this year as a double CD digi-pack, she swears she is......
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Services Member Gets Naked, Arrested at Faint Show
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pitchforkmedia.comTristan Bechet of openers Services saw fit to get buck naked during the duo's final songhttp://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/43670-services-member-gets-naked-arrested-at-faint-show ...
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Angels of Light | Review
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tinymixtapes.com | David NadelleHopelessly E-Devotional to Him. Hallelujah! Angels of Light Back With New Scripture05-21-2007 I may just have a suspicious nature, or maybe I'm reading into things way too much, but it seems that there has been a lot of God talk finding its way into the Tiny Mix Tapes news section lately (yes, two stories equal "a lot" in my world). It might have something to do with the season or an unconscious, heavenly prod to straighten up after celebrating the summer sun a bit too much too early this year. It might be that writing something original is harder than plagiarizing Macka's biblical-biased blurb from last week. Still on a TMT tip, it certainly has something to do with my night out with fellow scribe Munroe (who is a fucking heathen, pure and simple), because since that fateful night, I have felt, well, different inside. I cannot shake the feeling that an all-powerful force is at work. I cannot chalk it up to mere coincidence that when I stumblebummed my way into the bar washroom for the nth time that night, I was hit with a sudden rush of strangeness, and I have a vague memory of......
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Angels of Light | Review
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www.pitchforkmedia.com | Eric HarveyGira's post-Swans material can definitely stand with, perhaps even surpass, his earlier workNew Music: Angels of Light: "We Are Him" / "Black River Song" [Stream] Second acts for rock musicians come relatively often, but those that add something fresh and new to the artist's catalog are rare indeed. Since the 1997 dissolution of goth-metal pioneers Swans, Michael Gira has released a series of records as Angels of Light, a heading that covers his wide-ranging collaborative efforts, which lately includes working with drone-folk band Akron/Family. If these two songs are any indication of the rest of the forthcoming We Are Him--which also features contributions from industrial multi-instrumentalist Bill Rieflin, former Swan Christoph Hahn, and cellist Julia Kent from Antony and the Johnsons, among others-- it could stand as strong evidence that Gira's post-Swans material can definitely stand with, perhaps even surpass, his earlier work. The two advance singles from We Are Him continue Gira's solo trend toward a symbolic reversal, perhaps an atonement, for what Gira himself called the "bludgeoning, single-minded violence" of Swans' music, and a fervent procession toward redemption. The album's title track opens with an oscillating, meditative, minute-long drone before launching into the inclement, muscular blues......