Midway through Geek the Girl, as strings throb above a squawking police-emergency call, Lisa Germano intones a mantra of fear: "Baseball bat beside the bed." The song, "... A Psychopath," is aural theater that deals body blows; it's harrowingly real, as is this entire beautiful, wrenching album. John Mellencamp's violinist, Germano has accomplished fine music before: On the Way Down From the Moon Palace and Happiness were lovely and subtly disturbing. But with Geek she joins such poets of pain as Kurt Cobain and Polly Harvey in chronicling indelibly, with raw honesty, life in a culture of abuse. "Cancer of Everything," "... Of Love and Colors" and "Trouble" build on faraway piano, simple guitar and whispering to voice a victim's testimony, rendered in art that seizes the heart. Unforgettable. (RS 694)

PAUL EVANS