Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Lisa Germano's Geek The Girl, May 11, 2001
This album is scary. And by scary, I don't mean "let's go put on Halloween costumes and sing about boogeymen" scary. Or "abrasive cathartic white noise" scary. I'm talking about straight up bone-chilling scary.And the most disturbing thing about "Geek The Girl" is that what's scary is the reality of it. Lisa Germano's voice is thin and ethereal, sounding like a pale long-lost ghost bemoaning her past. At least that's what I imagined. Maybe I let my imagination run away with me, but everytime I listen to "Geek The Girl" I see Germano as some transparent sad gaunt ghost sitting at a piano bathed in the moonlight with sad empty eyes playing away ambient harrowing tunes. The entire album has this dark suicidal depressive pall over it. Even the somewhat light hearted gypsy instrumentals slid in between certain songs, lends no light to the murkiness. In fact, it only makes it even scarier. I cannot listen to this album sometimes because its so overwhelming. Don't even get me started on "...a psychopath". I nearly s**t myself, the first time I listened to it. With that actual 911 call in the background, ending with the caller screaming in a panic too real for comfort - "Why aren't you here?" Its morbid and I just feel like [throwing up] after listening to it. And those strings that she sparingly layers on to the minimalist piano tinkling away just seem to rend my heart in two. The other songs are still terribly frightening and deathly. "My Secret Reason", "Cancer of Everything", "Geek The Girl", "Cry Cry Wolf" are the standouts - tearjerking tunes that rivet your attention with a haunting melody. I can't listen to this album anymore than once a day. Its a work of art, no doubt. Not exactly what you could call "beautiful" - but it does have a majestic power to it. I didn't really care to delve into this album, but it pulls you in without mercy whether you want to or not. It's impossible to remain detached and distant, you feel like you're standing right next to the protagonist. "Geek The Girl" is more of an album that you can respect for its scope and concept more than you can be like "Oh I love this album!" For me at least. I'm more like "Stay away." But I return to it everytime. Ha ha ha...I'm such a geek.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An obscure but essential piece of '90s music., August 21, 2002
Some records are just destined to be overlooked by the masses in their own time -- Aimee Mann's Whatever, The Velvet Underground's debut, Shannon Wright's Maps of Tacit -- and Lisa Germano's Geek the Girl is one of them. Everyone in the rock community who did hear this record immediately acknowledged its importance (four stars in Rolling Stone); this is one album that definitely gets under your skin and carves its own unique place in the world during its first few seconds.
Germano, best known for her wonderful violin and mandolin work with John Mellencamp (best showcased on the excellent, rootsy Human Wheels album), is all over the map on her own records, playing most of the instruments and penning all the songs. She has a great ear for unnatural, disturbing musical beauty: Her own voice is a fragile, broken and sometimes sarcastic croon, kind of like Neil Young's in its often offkey pitch, but still a seductive one, and not entirely pessimistic. Germano's self-deprecating delivery is enormously affecting, but also very unnerving, as she always reveals pieces of you here and there. "My Secret Reason" opens the album heavily with an almost psychotic whirr of distorted sounds. Guitar? Keyboard? With Germano, it's always hard to tell instruments apart. "Trouble"'s lilting melody and light-fingered instrumentation evoke a phantasmic carousel ride, kind of like Lauren Hoffman with a massive dose of psychosis thrown into the mix; the title track is downright frightening in its suicidally depressed lyrics, ghostly vocal arrangement (Germano's multi-layered vocals are simply brilliant here), and slivers of chiming, funereal electric guitars. "...A Psychopath" best sums up the album...a journey into the mind of Germano's main character, a repressed, depressed, and self-aware woman whose demons appear to be coming alive by virtue of suffocating presence.
There is no other sonic experience quite like this album. Not the heavy soundscapes of My Dying Bride, not the pots-and-pans experimentation of Miranda Sex Garden, and not the equally worthy and eccentric Shannon Wright. Geek the Girl is worth owning just for its unique personality.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This album shocked me., December 25, 1999
I bought this CD because it was mentioned as one of Spin magazine's top albums of the 90s. Well, I got it in the mail and popped it into my CD player. I had no idea what to expect... but the second I heard that intensely creepy carnival jukebox music that kicked off the first track, my hackles rose. The rest of the album proceeded to stir my emotions like few other artists can do... the song 'Cry Wolf', about impulse and regret, almost had me crying myself. The other, 'A Psychopath', which features an actual 911 call, tense strings, and that jukebox again, absolutely scared the living daylights out of me. All wrapped up in a nice little package, DIE to all rapists and stalkers."Somehow I listened to the whole thing, then I put the CD on the shelf and did not even touch it for weeks. Later, when I listened again, I realized that past the initial shock value is an incredibly deep, powerful, heart-rending album. This album tells a story, and it is a story to bring tears to your eyes. Lisa Germano's rough voice is the perfect compliment to the jagged emotions on display here, and I was equally impressed by the fact that the lion's share of instrumental work was done by her as well. Be prepared to be scared by this album - then gather the courage to listen again, and you'll love it. I do.
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by Lisa Germano 
