Released in the USA 21st July. Released over the rest of the world in October.

On Slide, Lisa Germano's fifth album, several songs feature an instrument called a Fun Machine...Lisa Germano - known for disquieting, moody songs that deal with raw emotions and the kind of thoughts most people aren't brave enough to talk about - a Fun Machine.

"Yeah'" she says, laughing. "It's this old, funky sounding keyboard with even cheesier built-in rhythms that Tchad Blake (producer) bought as a kind of joke cause he knows that my stuff can turn rather dark. The woman who sold it to him spoke fondly of her late husband who had the whole neighborhood groovin."

"Yeah, he used to whoop it up! So we tried to whoop up my slowest, saddest songs one day before recording and it was pretty funny with the rumba rhythm and all. Kind of loosened us up for the whole session."

Odd-sounding keyboards - along with Johnny Cougar violin sounds, and other curious, phantom noises - create a haunting charm throughout the album, from the Fun Machine heard on 'Turning Into Betty' to the field organ, or harmonium, on several other songs. Inside this otherworldly atmosphere, Germano whispers lines that - more like private confidences than lyrics - deal with hopelessness and wonder, fear and stuckness, growth and other dimensions, and of course love, the missing link. And this is , as Germano says, her most uplifting album yet.

"I called it slide because it's about sliding back and forth between waves of feelings and thoughts about the potentially good place to be in your world or the typically bad place you've gotten used to."

Germano calls "Way Below The Radio," "Tomorrowing," "Electrified," "Reptile," and "slide" the most optimistic songs she's ever written, she says, "but it's funny, cause I'm often surprised when I think a song of mine is positive and someone else finds it sad or even upsetting." Certainly those familiar with Germano's previous albums will recognize the fractured sentiments of such songs as the beautifully melancholic "No Color Here," the sweet and sad "Guillotine" and the pretty but acerbic "If I think of Love."

Throughout the album, Germano examines the frailty of happiness and the uncertainty of mood swings in her admittedly auto-biographical songs. In "Tomorrowing," she's talking to that club of people who feel alone (which doesn't really make sense) and find feeling awful about everything in life the tie that binds them to other people. "Then maybe they don't feel as alone and by knowing it's OK, together maybe they help each other out of it. Maybe not, just one of those hope things."

Working with producer/engineer Tchad Blake (Latin Playboys, Tom Waits, Cibo Matto, Ron Sexsmith, Soul Coughing, Suzanne Vega), the record was recorded in Los Angeles using musicians including Jerry Maratta on drums (Peter Gabriel), Joe Gore guitarist (P.J. Harvey), Jeff Scheff on bass (Elvis Costello), Craig Ross (Lisa Germano, ha ha!) and Tchad and Lisa in the "what is that sound?" department. Germano speaks highly of Blake's studio magic, which created a spare, uncluttered instrumental framework for her intimate vocals.

"Tchad has a way of recording where things sound like they're coming from different areas of the room. His records are really beautiful played in headphones; it's like these sounds just drip down the sides of your head."

A binaural mike has something to do with it, as does the vast array of instruments used on the record. Then there's the evocative interludes heard between the songs, bits of instrumental landscapes that serve to cleanse the sonic palette.

"I usually do that on my records, because personally I get tired of hearing just my voice and my lyrics, song after song. I like a record to make me feel something from beginning to end, so I like to have moods and colors that flow from one place to the next."

And in the end, making a listener feel a mood or connect with an emotion is Germano's goal.

"I think it is important for people to communicate emotions to each other in the world, and this is the way I do it." She says. "On my next record, i don't want it to be too sad, but other worldly and truly beautiful. I'd like to continue to write from a positive place, but it's hard....so it'll probably be an instrumental."