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Lisa Germano | Review
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Rolling Stone | Lorraine Ali What is Victoria's secret? 1996Excerpts from a Love Circus Lisa Germano makes music so beautifully tragic and depressing that it seems nearly fatal. When Germano – a former backing violinist for John Mellencamp and Bob Seger – became a solo artist, it wasn't the weepy moan of her instrument that touched a universal nerve but the resigned cadence in her voice and her self-deprecating lyrics. She represented all those girls who used to hear, "Hey, smile, it's not that bad," and instead of answering with a hearty "fuck you," just cracked a half-assed grin and swallowed hard. On her fourth and best solo album, Germano deadpans lines like "Coffee in the morning, wine in the evening/And everything else is boring, boring, boring" and accents her songs with comically lifeless exclamations like "yeah, yeah" or "hey, hey." She mixes that dry humor with self-loathing in the fragile "Victoria's Secret": "What is Victoria 's secret?/She says you are ugly, and I am pretty/Your man wishes you looked like me." There is a surreal quality to the music – accordion, violin, the meowing of her cats – that is enhanced by the woozy, underwater feel of the production, washing the......
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Lisa Germano | Review
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Spin Magazine | Sia Michel She values mood and texture over structure 1996Excerpts from a Love Circus In one painful scene in Welcome to the Dollhouse, “grade-grubbing” Dawn wiener degrades herself as she stumbles through an oral report on dignity. On Excerpts from a Love Circus, Lisa Germano proclaims “I suck dignity” like a card-carrying member of the Special People’s Club. Dawn and Lisa are our sacrificial Wiener Dogs: They suck so we don't have to. The difference is, Dawn can’t help it; pushing 40, Germano rubs our noses in her misery with the desperation of someone convinced her loserdom is the only noteworthy thing about her. Her brilliant last album, 1994’s Geek the Girl, welcomed you to the bell jar with creepily beautiful apologias for the “angry and dumb and not too cool.” She couldn’t get past cult status though: Beck was the Loser, baby, and, more important, Courtney Love was bringing grrrl attitude to the mainstream. You oughta know how much such anthems are sounding increasingly escapist and phony; Germano captures a reality of deep-rooted self-disgust and masochism many women are too ashamed to admit to in a supposed era of empowerment. “What is Victoria's Secret?” she breathlessly repeats......
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Swans | Swans Related Projects | Review
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Roadkilltwo extraordinary albumsM. Gira - Drainland Jarboe - Sacrificial Cake Let's get one thing straight. These LPs will not be bad. It is impossible for Gira to do anything remotely resembling a failure (apart from his immense song of the same name!). His solo offering should easily be a Swans LP on its own. The spacious almost choral backing is there in force, and the deep, deep vocals brood over the top. Some of the tracks seem to harken back to the more industrial era of Swans, particularly track 3, "I see them all lined up," but this adds variety to what is a huge album. Jarboe's LP is probably more pretty, but weirder. To hear her enchanting voice whisper about gribbly goblins and mushroom men as you fall asleep at night is nothing short of begging for a night of nightmare lunacy. She has moments of pure beauty, "My Buried Child" and pure horror, "The Body Lover." These contrasting emotions all add up in both cases to two extraordinary albums each of matching brilliance. Worth stealing from a friend for....
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Swans / M. Gira | The Great Annihilator / Drainland | Review
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Rolling StoneGreat Annihilator ***, Drainland ***A decade ago SWANS were a seminal noise band, a contemporary influence on Sonic Youth and a predecessor to Nine Inch Nails. But Swans' aggressively ugly music—loud, slow and monotonously grinding—combined with singer M. Gira's queasy lyric stew of sadistic sex and violence guaranteed a limited audience. Since then they've somehow perservered largely unheard, on the fringe's fringe. Even more surprising given their monotonic original sound they've evolved. The current Swans consist of Gira on vocals, guitar and miscellaneous sounds, and a woman named Jarboe on vocals and keyboards plus whoever they can get to fill out the rhythm section. The music has opened up a great deal. New Age electronic pastels are as likely to be part of the mix as the band's signature metallic harshness. What have remained are Gira's transgressive lyrics and brutal attitude. Annihilator is rife with tales of mutilating murders either in love with their victims or the power of their own cruelty. Gira structures his songs like repetitive loops—a few bars and you've usually heard the whole scheme—and this lack of resolution, of catharsis, contributes to the overall ominous feel. Add to this Gira's deep, weary drawl—monsters, while never......
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M. Gira | Drainland | Review
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Metroland, Albany NY | J. Eric SmithDrainland's oftentimes disturbing imagery makes it a record to avoid like buboes for the faint of constitution.While quasi-religious gumpisms and random acts emerge as the preferred salves for the collective cultural conscience during our Fluffy Spirituality Phase, Michael Gira stands before the horrifically confrontational Swans screaming in confusion over the painful messiness involved with being animated (but transcendence seeking) meat. His limping quest to reconcile (and not just salve) the chafe of selfish bodily reality against social convention and spiritual aspiration is documented on records with Circus Mort, Swans, Skin (Gira), and The World of Skin, any of which can serve as an effective antidote to the unpleasant numbing and tingling effects caused by overuse of Fluffy Spirituality Salve. Drainland, featuring fellow Swans Jarboe and Bill Rieflin, provides the newest chapter in Gira's progress as reluctant pilgrim. The Branca-meets-Wagner triple guitar attack of Swans' recent The Great Annihilator has been replaced with lean tape-loop/sample driven grooves wrapped in organ washes and resonant twelve-string drones. Gira's voice remains a natural wonder—a sepulchral bass that is both meditative and mournful, and is perfectly suited to songs with titles like "Why I Ate My Wife," "I See......