Lisa Germano
Geek The Girl

Unknown to the general public, Lisa Germano is perhaps the best songwriter of the '90s.
Her way of narrating herself through music is a deep and painful journey through fears, nightmares, and unknown places inhabited by the most hidden human feelings.

"Geek The Girl" is undoubtedly her best album, imbued with a sense of oppressive claustrophobia, of gripping anguish as the minutes pass. You are pierced by a thin and imperceptible blade, which gradually makes you experience the deepest and incurable pain. You are dragged into an oneiric dimension, which stuns and envelops with infinite sadness, as in the case of "Cry Wolf", a tender and aching twilight of the soul supported by Lisa's feeble voice, more like a lament than a song.
The same light lives in the title track, even more pervaded by a sense of somnambulism, only towards the conclusion aimed at seeking hope, a dreamed hand...
Darkness falls again in the track that's undoubtedly the most emotional on the album, the dramatic "...A Psychopath". In the background, a woman's cry (taken from an actual call to an emergency number) suppressed by a heartbreaking violin that ravages Lisa's childish lullaby, singing as if in a trance, closed within herself, to escape witches and ghosts. The contrast between these two themes makes this track a blade, a cold wind that leaves you petrified, without answers, immobile in the face of the pain that sexual abuse brings with it...
The Italian tarantella interlude that follows (of which there are 3 on the album) is another mocking jest, another sarcastic glance at the world that doesn't belong to her.
The subsequent "Sexy Little Girl Princess" maintains almost the same levels, Germano's singing this time becomes ethereal, reminiscent of Elizabeth Fraser's phrasings from Cocteau Twins, yet the atmosphere is always spectral, tense, thanks to the malevolent dissonances of the violin in the background.
It's only towards the end that the album finds a thin thread of light, I would dare say hope, with "...Of Love And Colours" but especially with "Stars", a track perhaps not accidentally placed at the end, preceded by the usual mocking tarantella, which this time is shorter, as if to close a chapter and try to open another.
Indeed, our Lisa now seems to fly lightly, freed from the weight of that force of gravity, too burdensome for her fragile bones, and gives us two and a half minutes of love, of tender emotion, of joyful weeping.

An album of infinite greatness, "Geek The Girl" is undoubtedly to be counted among the great masterpieces of the '90s, simultaneously hard, as heavy as a boulder but also tender and light as a feather, cold as a blade but also warm like tears, whether of joy or pain.