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lisa germano / magic neighbor review
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blurt magazine / jennifer kellyGermano again wraps disturbing imagery and disquieting epiphanies in velvety textures of piano and violin. However, her subject here seems to be less one of romantic suffering and more of escape through art.Blurt http://www.blurt-online.com/reviews/view/1538/ 10/09/2009 Lisa Germano Magic Neighbor (Young God) by JENNIFER KELLY Since her 4AD days, Lisa Germano has set harrowing narratives to beautiful melodies, most notoriously, perhaps, in Geek the Girl's "A Psychopath" with its incorporated 9-1-1 call. For Magic Neighbor, her sixth solo album, Germano again wraps disturbing imagery and disquieting epiphanies in velvety textures of piano and violin. However, her subject here seems to be less one of romantic suffering and more of escape through art. Germano has, perhaps, entered a stage of life where interpersonal conflicts simmer, rather than erupting into violence, where long-term lovers make a deal to ignore their relationship's worst aspects. Magic Neighbor is about coming to terms with not-quite-satisfactory ever-afters, about leaving mundane compromises through stories and imaginary painted doors. You can hear the tension in the music, as well as the words, as bits of orchestral fantasia introduce a flight to imagination. There's a syrup-y swoon of violin at the break in "To the Mighty......
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lisa germano / magic neighbor review
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pitchfork / joshua Klein...occasionally awkward intersection of intimacy and elusiveness pervades the disc, just as it pervades Germano's other high-wire-act works, but this time the end effect is oddly inviting. It's almost as if we're being allowed a glimpse into a blurry movie flickering away in Germano's head, projected sans subtitles and its plot obscured, yet somehow no less affecting for it. http://pitchfork.com/ http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13515-magic-neighbor/ album review Lisa Germano Magic Neighbor [Young God; 2009] 7.3 — Joshua Klein, October 8, 2009 There's glum, and then there's Lisa Germano glum, a sort of wry reaction to bearing the heavy weight of the world mingled with the realization that life might not get much better. It's not totally without hope, but it is the weary sound of real life pressing down from all sides, unfiltered through the usual irony and dramatic stylistic flourishes. It's often not exactly fun, either, and while Germano may rue the comparison, it's hard to jibe her work as a solo artist with the image of her fiddling away exuberantly in John Mellencamp's "Paper in Fire" video. Still, that was a lifetime ago, and since then Germano has come to occupy her own little niche. No surprise that the......
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lisa germano / magic neighbor review
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montreal gazette / jordan zivitzGermano inhabits a dream world - one that moves in slow motion, often populated by hazy apparitions.Montreal Gazette http://www.montrealgazette.com/entertainment/Music+releases/2056896/story.ht ml LISA GERMANO / Magic Neighbor Young God by Jordan Zivitz october 2 / 2009 Lisa Germano inhabits a dream world - one that moves in slow motion, often populated by hazy apparitions. But Magic Neighbor is more lucid, less alien, with arrangements that aren't as likely to drift in and out of focus. If that means Germano's addictively narcotic atmospheres are downplayed, it also means her intimacy is even more heightened than usual. Her lullabies for troubled souls remain meant for lights-off seclusion, and there are still fantasyland touches (Simple's off-kilter merry-go-round soundtrack is simultaneously comforting and worrisome). But there's also a renewed emphasis on Germano's warm violin, and Snow's glacial piano is typical of how she can release cascades of emotion from just a few delicate notes....
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lisa germano / magic neighbor review
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spin magazine / david beavanher touch remains as delicate as ever....David Beavan / Spin Magazine October 2009 Three songs into Lisa Germano’s eighth album, as an unfussy guitar line gives way to a winsome waltz led by her own violin, she sings the realization “That the world could be so simple.” Of course, Germano has long since realized that it’s anything but, so she proceeds to rasp devastating lines about “turning families into target practice” (on the title track) while wrapping her grave words with filigrees of piano and chimes. Little has changed since her mid-90’s 4AD heyday, but instrumental bagatelles like “Marypan” and “Kitty Train” reveal that her touch remains as delicate as ever....
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james blackshaw (and others) article
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acoustic guitar magazine / Charles Saufley His music draws equally on his love of modern and minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and La Monte Young, as well as Debussy, Ravel, and Indian classical composers who’ve explored the meditative and transcendental potential of stringed instruments for centuries. Blackshaw’s deceptively simple compositions and performances are dreamlike, ever-unfolding pieces of spiderweb intricacy with a spacious quality heightened by the ethereal chime of his Guild 12-string.Acoustic Guitar Magazine 10/01/2009 Blackshaw, Bishop, and Smith By Charles Saufley James Blackshaw, Sir Richard Bishop, and Sean Smith are part of a thriving solo acoustic movement that fuses postpunk, minimalist, and experimental attitudes with Takoma-style fingerpicking, raga, and Gypsy styles in forms that range from the reverent to the radical. From vagabond Gypsies to country blues wailers and radical folkies, acoustic guitar has always had a role as an outsider’s instrument. But in the past ten years it’s become one of the most prevalent—even subversive—sounds in a teeming musical underground of players who grew up with the acoustic/metal fusions of Led Zeppelin, delved into experimentally minded post-punk artists like Sonic Youth, and readily embraced free jazz, electronic minimalists, and acoustic renegades like Robbie Basho, Sandy Bull, Davey......