Lisa Novak
Perfect Mess
Independent

by William Michael Smith

Here in the nation's fourth largest city, we have a hard time keeping our genres separated ­ or even much caring about separating them. Unlike your first grade teacher, we don't mind our performers getting a little messy with their coloring, jagging out across the lines, one crayola color overlapping another, the occasional stroke that goes against the pattern. As long as it's good, nobody much cares to judge whether the coloring is "messy." Perfect conditions for Houstonian Lisa Novak's Perfect Mess.

At times sounding like the best of Mary Chapin Carpenter (just listen to "Cluttered Life" if you think I'm exaggerating!), at other times veering into jangly, your-best-friend folk rock, and even edging into adult pop with juicy, loaded lines like "were you out late again getting nowhere/tossin' around another Mr. Right," Novak mixes it up on Perfect Mess.

She has changed her musical approach slightly since she burst onto the Houston scene in 1995 as the vocalist/leader of Big Holiday. The band quickly became local crowd favorites and were voted Best Folk Rock band in the Houston Press poll that year. But this time out, Novak has added more beat, a bit more edge on the guitars, and occasional well placed touches of fiddle (Kristen Jensen) and mandolin (super "he's-everywhere" sideman Mark Zeus), widening her genre coverage enough so that she's even been getting a bit of airplay on Houston's KIKK, a country station, as well as on the always eclectic Americana-oriented KPFT.

With her dusky, knowing voice and hip, big-city lyrics, Novak's Perfect Mess never bores, never lets a listener fall off into a rut, never allows for any easy listening shortcuts. Backed again by her Big Holiday crew ­ guitarists Steve Greenwell and co-writer Vince Martin, bassist John Haddad, drummer James Stone, and pianist Ken Bujnoch -- Novak (like Chapin Carpenter or Lucinda Williams) comes across as smart, literate, highly aware, well traveled and well spoken, as someone who sees below the surface without much effort and can distill the messy complexities into pithy word-bites for those of us who need it simple and direct. Her slightly bitter, slightly judgmental, slightly resigned "Release Me" ("release me, modern life, release me") comes straight from the Big Girls School of songwriting.

Afraid to promise
You say it always put your back against the wall
So why don't you save all your comments
Until you think you've done it all
Is this what you thought it would be like

She also has a knack for projecting a sensuality in her lyrics and her vocal delivery. While she can keep it quiet and simple, she can also expand her production and her range and become quite powerful on tracks like "Never Will," which has a sort of a wistful Bruce Hornsby vibe.

Still searchin' for answers, your life's in disarray
You've been livin' like you're on some sort of big holiday
You've been living this way all your life
'Cause you say it gives you such a thrill
But come home, baby, come home now
If you haven't figured it out, you never will

No doubt there will be those who make an Indigo Girls or some kind of Lility Fair connection, given that Novak's songs are loaded with female/male situations that are filled with doubt and uncertainty and even distrust as often as they are with love and kisses and pretty valentines. Her heroines aren't dainty wallflowers or runway models, they are everyday women in the thick of the "cluttered life" Novak describes so eloquently. The title track is a twangy, rocking track with plenty of that wisdom garnered in the school of hard knocks. Maturity comes hard, but gaining maturity is the only way to see how things really are, how things are supposed to work. The storybook picture never fits the reality of relationships, but seeing past the storybook picture is the road to making a relationship work.

I always thought that I had to get it right
But I've learned to surrender to the night
When daylight turns to sunset it always makes me wonder
What happens next
But I'm sure of this, we are the perfect mess

There is hard-eyed, don't-blink realism in Novak's work (many co-written with Vince Martin) that puts her on a plane with the best songwriters around. Her no nonsense narrator in "Time of Day" has X-ray vision.

A plaything was all you wanted but the maintenance was high
So maybe you finally noticed that I've been here all the time
Those carefree prima donnas don't seem to be your type
And they're basing their performances on what they think you'll like
'Cause I see the kind you like, I'm not blind,
I've watched them throw themselves at you
And every day and every night I like the idea
I like the idea that I'm gonna get to prove

(chorus)
I can be, I can be, I can be like any of those things
I can be, I can be any of those kind
I can be, I can be, I can be like those other women
If you'll just give me the time of day

A 1998 winner of Billboard Magazine's songwriting competition for her song "Make Believe," one of Ticketmaster's "Top Twenty Best Unsigned Bands," and a perennial nominee in the Houston Press "Best of Houston" awards, Novak has had her share of brushes with record companies, but so far through three albums she has continued to release her work independently while maintaining the trendy hair salon she owns in Houston's Montrose district, "All Decked Out."

"Hairdressing is my money and the way to finance the band, so it's not holding me back. It's actually allowing me to do it."

As good a performer as she is, the songwriting is Novak's primary musical interest. Her Perfect Mess turns out to be one of those albums that I could literally quote some smart, well-stated passage from every song. Novak hopes to get her songs in front of other performers with the idea that one of her originals will be covered.

"The writing is the passion. I've always written songs, I just didn't take it seriously until the last few years. I felt like I must have been doing something right to get into SXSW and to do well in assorted contests and all."

Novak is trying to commit more time to music and, like most Houston musicians, is constantly looking for new ways to make a career in music viable. She's recently begun to do acoustic solo shows and has formed an acoustic duo with her friend Melinda Mones, another local singer-songwriter who also works in a band format and sang harmony with Novak on several tracks on Perfect Mess.

"As a hairdresser, I've worked my way into now only working 3 or 4 days a week so I am very flexible. I can leave and travel in pursuing music. I'm just not sure how to do it all. That's why I am doing the acoustic thing, so I can just go by myself if needed."

Flexibility seems to be the key to generating a career, given that few bands can make a living just playing Houston. Novak is working on a new angle to branch out.

"I recently started working at a salon in Austin one Saturday a month to try to get booked in Austin more often. We've played the Saxon Pub there, and they seem to book locals more often than out of town folks. So I'm trying to establish a form of dual residency since I am in Austin a lot."

For now, Austin's loss is Houston's gain. Houston remains an off-the-public-radar haven for fine female singer-songwriter performers like Kimberly M'Carver, Jennifer Fitts, Melinda Mones, and Lisa Novak. I suspect come 8 o'clock Thursday night, a hundred or so music lovers will be crowded around Novak and Mones at their Café Noche performance. It's sad but true, what the local musicians (especially the old salts) say: "Houston is a great place for a musician to practice ­ and a hard place to make a living." But we spectators get the pleasure of being able to say, "Yeah, I saw her when she was playing for peanuts at a little place not long ago." Or in some of our cases: "Yeah, she used to cut my hair."

*Go on and get your hands dirty. Slip on your rubber gloves and pick up Lisa Novak's Perfect Mess at www.lisanovak.com. This is a smart, sophisticated album.


Contact William Michael Smith at: wms-at-rockzilla.net

 
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