Lisa Germano’s spare fragility, her whispery confidentiality, would come off as too precious if she didn’t pay such great attention to the craftsmanship of her writing.
Instead, her new album has enough trenchant, note-perfect images to fill a good-sized lit mag, though they remain part of stubbornly unspecific narratives. From the devastating loneliness of the title track to the ruminatively anthematic “Back to Earth,” from the spooky swoon of “Diamonds” to her diaphanous surrender on “… And So On,” No Elephants moves seamlessly from one chest-blooming, completely interpretive vignette to another.
Something else that sets this project apart from the cutesy cooing crowd is Germano’s wine-dark sensibilities. No Elephants (set for release on February 12, 2013, via Badman Recording Company) is shot through with a chilling portent, this cob-webbed gothic feel. As sweetly as it’s conveyed vocally, there is an unsettling subtext here that reveals new depths with each successive listen.
It’s fitting, then, that the interior, crepuscular No Elephants is performed largely alone, with only Jamie Candiloro (the former R.E.M. producer) providing some loops and atmospherics while Sebastian Steinberg (ex-Soul Coughing) is on acoustic bass. Like the close and quiet vocal style she established immediately after splitting as a featured fiddler with John Mellencamp years ago, everything about Germano’s music — then, as now — feels too personal to have been performed in a crowded orchestral space.
In the end, No Elephants feels like a deeply personal statement, made in such a way that any of us could relate. Germano has created a complex tapestry of emotions, each one more ineffably fascinating than the next.
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