Ani DiFranco: Binary

ANI DIFRANCO: BINARY (2017)

1) Binary; 2) Pacifist's Lament; 3) Zizzing; 4) Play God; 5) Alrighty; 6) Telepathic; 7) Even More; 8) Spider; 9) Sasquatch; 10) Terrifying Sight; 11) Deferred Gratification.

Just three more years, and here is Ani DiFranco once again showing us how she has totally not forgotten the art of juggling a moderately pleasant and inventive record with a milk-curdling piece of soft-jazz doodling. Judging by the number of professional and amateur reviews that Binary got upon release, the quantity of people still on the lookout for a brand new Ani DiFranco record has probably decreased to a three-digit number at best, a two-one at the most probable — all the more ironic, considering how the lady has not lost her penchant for progressive preaching one single bit... it is simply not clear who she is preaching to at the moment.

Of the few reviews that did appear, not a single one bothered to say more than one sentence about the musical aspects of the record, and that is no surprise — they are non-descript. Ani plays with a full band throughout, but it does not help much. The musical emphasis is on groove rather than melody: tracks like ʽBinaryʼ, ʽPlay Godʼ, and some others are jazzy and funky, except that there is no true hotness to any of that funkiness. Everything is quiet, smooth, nocturnal, carefully played so as not to upset your neighbors — even the nasty-sounding wah-wah guitars, when pre­sent in the mix, are carefully brought down in the mix so that, God forbid, they overpower Ani's acoustic rhythm and semantically significant vocals.

Result: not a single memorable melody, not a single groove that would truly make you want to move, and a general feeling that every bit of string vibration here is just a coaster for the lyrical content — even if the backing band contains no less than ten different musicians, frequently adding string and bass overdubs. The sense of importance is further heightened by bringing in people such as Gail Ann Dorsey (best known as the bass player for the late David Bowie) and Justin Vernon (best known as The Log Cabin Monster) on backing vocals — each one for only one track, so as not to cheapen their symbolic value. (Something tells me, though, that Bon Iver audiences are not going to flock together in the direction of Ani DiFranco at the moment — they are probably not over their Kanye West phase yet). But this theoretical importance has no bearing on the general mood of the album, which is just dull.

Let us, therefore, just get this out of the system: the music here exists solely as a soft, atmospheric wrapping for the next batch of DiFranco's socially-conscious poetry. Is the poetry any good? Well, some of it is fairly flat: ʽPacifist's Lamentʼ is a bit too straightforward and predictable: "there is nothing harder than to stop in the middle of a battle and say you're sorry" sounds like something that the Dalai Lama must have probably already said at some time. ʽPlay Godʼ is a pro-choice statement that may be as relevant today as ever, but is delivered as a political mani­festo, not as a properly metaphorical work of art. On the opposite side of the spectrum, we get cryptic post-beatnik lyrical flows like ʽSpiderʼ that sound like they belong in some Greenwich Village cafe circa 1960 (I honestly have no idea what this one is about). In other words, not much has changed, as we are still on the same old progressive, feminist, anti-religious crusade: "Next time I watch a man give birth / I'll try to picture the creator as a dude with a beard" (ʽAlrightyʼ) is as deep as this stuff truly gets.

Although the album was released in June 2017, all of the songs were written and recorded prior to the elections of 2016, meaning that DiFranco's crusade takes place irrespective of the technical details of the political configuration — which, I believe, is a good thing. The bad thing is that I fail to see how this «tepid» approach to music-making can help her reach a wider audience than the one that has already been converted for a long time. These days, most likely, if you still listen to Ani DiFranco, you are already a progressively thinking, pro-feminist, pro-choice, anti-chau­vinist, anti-Trump, etc. etc. kind of person; do you really need an extra dose of that to help you get through the day? I certainly do not — so here's another thumbs down.

Ani DiFranco: Allergic To Water

ANI DIFRANCO: ALLERGIC TO WATER (2014)

1) Dithering; 2) See See See See; 3) Woe Be Gone; 4) Careless Words; 5) Allergic To Water; 6) Harder Than It Needs To Be; 7) Genie; 8) Happy All The Time; 9) Yeah Yr Right; 10) TR'W; 11) Still My Heart; 12) Rainy Parade.

Sometimes I feel as if the two different sides of Ani DiFranco — the «musician» side and the «make a statement» side — are two mortal enemies: they can never reach a compromise or es­tablish any neutral balance, but in the case of each particular record, one simply has to win over the other. Most of the time, the «statement» side has the upper hand, and we have to tolerate her rudimentary acoustic squibbling while getting educated on social, political, and gender issues. But every once in a while, the «musician» shines through a little, and the better the music gets, the less emphasis there is on the lyrics.

Not that the words do not matter much on Allergic To Water: as you can probably guess from the title, this is an album whose subjects deal with displeasures, premonitions, imbalances, and inadequacies — sort of a natural with Ms. DiFranco, and even peaceful family life could not re­medy the issue completely — but, unlike the previous record, this one is nowhere near as belli­gerent, and comes across as a much more natural, credible, and «pessimistically-peaceful» offe­ring that, for once, gives her the occasion to express her moods and fears more through music than through words.

ʽDitheringʼ opens the record with a few playfully quirky jazzy chords, then quickly turns into a dark acoustic funky groove — a dense, slightly creepy arrangement that recalls her best compo­sitions from about two decades ago. It does not blow the roof off or anything: just a solid groove that perfectly conveys a worried, if not desperate, state of mind, and it sets a perfect tone for the rest of the album: troubled, concerned with the now and the future, tightly focused, but not hys­terical or hyper­active. Mature enough, but not too lazy or too rambling — the perfect state in which I am ready not only to tolerate DiFranco, but sometimes even to embrace her (figuratively, of course: a literal embrace would probably get you a kick in the groin from the lady).

Although she will probably never again return to the technically complex acoustic playing of her debut album, Allergic To Water has plenty of pleasant little acoustic melodies — ʽSee See See Seeʼ hops along to another simple, but endearing jazzy sequence; later on, ʽYeah Yr Rightʼ has some flashy fingerpicking, and the concluding ʽRainy Paradeʼ bids goodbye with a magical tone (well attenuated by the accompanying chimes). Furthermore, there are some vocal hooks here and there — ʽYeah Yr Rightʼ has an excellent harmony arrangement, and each verse of ʽCareless Wordsʼ ends in a touch of implied tragedy that she paints in a surprisingly believable manner.

Lyrics-wise, the one track that will probably stick out is ʽHappy All The Timeʼ, because its mini­malistic arrangement (just guitar and some friendly, but ghostly harmonies in the back­ground) helps concentrate on the chorus — which one has to take ironically, because one thing Allergic To Water is definitely not is an album about a happy person. Normally, I hate these songs, but since it is the only such track on the entire record, it gets salvaged by its context, and I can appre­ciate the message, provided I get it right (the illusionary «safety» of the modern cuddled person next to half-mythical tales of heroic suffering).

All in all, believe it or not, this is DiFranco's best album since at least Knuckle Down, and, truth be told, maybe even her best since Dilate — in eighteen years, that is, which just goes to show how much of a pleasant surprise the experience has been. See, in those eighteen years, her biggest know-how was irritation: lyrical irritation, melodic (or «anti-melodic» irritation), atmospheric irritation, all sorts of things that had me (and many others, I'm sure) going «why the heck am I wasting time on this crap?» But on Allergic To Water, she shows that she has not completely forgotten how to be musically inventive and lyrically intelligent without being irritating (in the bad sense of that word, not the artistically relevant one). There's a meaningful moodiness here, and just enough personal restraint and humility to earn my trust; I would never have believed it, but yes, here I am in 2014 issuing a thumbs up for an Ani DiFranco album. Next on the list: start believing in world peace and spiritual progress once more.

Ani DiFranco: Which Side Are You On?

ANI DIFRANCO: ¿WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? (2012)

1) Life Boat; 2) Unworry; 3) ¿Which Side Are You On?; 4) Splinter; 5) Promiscuity; 6) Albacore; 7) J; 8) If YR Not; 9) Hearse; 10) Mariachi; 11) Amendment; 12) Zoo.

A four-year gap in productivity is not something we have come to expect from Ani DiFranco. But kids are kids, and even the icon-est icon of feminism is ironically bound to get stuck with being a mother once she actually becomes a mother — apparently, the long delay was caused by the lady having to dedicate more time to family matters (family? ooh, what a disgustingly obsolete con­cept for the genuinely progressive mind).

The consequences of this are both positive and negative. Positive, because this means more time to flesh out the compositions — for a thoroughly non-genius songwriter, it is a serious advantage, and, although there is not a single song on here that managed to genuinely strike a chord with me, some of the tunes seemed more notable than just about anything off her previous two records. But negative, because the delay seems to have made her lose her biters — or, at least, dull them to the point where I find it hard to believe that even a single intelligent person on Earth would want to be moved by her sociopolitical stance.

Want it or not, Ani DiFranco used to be a poet — good poet, bad poet, innovative poet, banal poet, whatever, the subject is up for discussion. Even when she used to mix liberal preaching with poetry, she usually took care to preserve some sort of balance between the two. But now we have stuff like ʽAmendmentʼ, which begins as follows: "Wouldn't it be nice if we had an amendment to give civil rights to women, to once and for all just really lay it down from a point of view of wo­men..." and goes on more or less the same way for six and a half minutes. ("It's a song that's got a lot of those words in it that are hard to sing", our protagonist says in one of the filmed introduc­tions to her performing the song live, and yeah, I concur: it is fairly hard to put the Communist Party Manifesto to music as well, no matter how much time Friedrich Engels would spend trying to find the right guitar chords to Karl Marx' lyrics).

The saddest thing of all is, she does not even sound convincing when she delivers this stuff — nor when she delivers the «hit of the season» in the guise of the title track, an old chestnut by fellow feminist icon Florence Reece, with a new set of updated lyrics and a ninety-year old Pete Seeger himself accompanying the recording on banjo and backup vocals. It is supposed to be big, power­ful, inspirational, and anthemic, but it sounds a little tired to me; tired, monotonous, and particu­larly ineffective from the point of view of the current situation. The lyrics themselves are caught in contradictions — first admitting that "now there’s folks in Washington that care what’s on our minds", then going off in all directions: Reaganomics, consumerism, poverty, starving Africa, patriarchy, environmentalism, you name the rest.

Risking further curses from the (rapidly decreasing, I am afraid) legions of Ani fans, I would dare to suggest: the fact that these lyrics look ever less and less like poetry and ever more and more like a particularly trivial brand of leftist propaganda must mean that the lady herself is not altoge­ther interested any more. That old flame, which could at least occasionally take on curious sha­pes and reach scorching temperatures, has shrunk to yer good old predictable quiet crackle of a log in the living-room fireplace.

It is even more evident if we consider the simplest rule of this album: the more personal and quiet any particular song is, the less annoying and silly it stands out to the senses. ʽIf Yr Notʼ is built around a technically dark, distorted bluesy riff, but the message is: "If you're not getting happier as you get older, then you're fucking up", and even if she sings it in her trademark «grim» man­ner, there is not so much irony here as stern, solid truth. On ʽLife Boatʼ, she almost seems to be apologizing to her fans: "...and I didn’t really want a baby, and I guess that I had a choice, but I just let it grow inside me, that persistent little voice..." — and the song is not very memorable, but it has a nice ring and attitude to it. And then there is ʽAlbacoreʼ, which is just a simple love song, minimalistic, sweet, and quite hard-to-hate.

Musically, Which Side Are You On is, of course, an ongoing disaster — most of it is acoustic, without a single trace of what an individualistic and even inimitable player Ani used to be a cou­ple of decades ago. But at least there is no more pretending of being a «serious jazz-pop artist»: despite a plethora of backing musicians, most of the backing is either in the background or used primarily for «side effect» purposes (only the title track, in accordance with anthem requirements, is given a near-symphonic arrangement, with a full children's choir and an entire New Orleans student brass band involved). The sound, overall, is quite unpretentious and decent; it's just that there are no interesting melodies. But we have already come to expect that.

What we did not come to expect is this spiritual transformation — one that she herself may not be fully aware of, but, hopefully, as time goes by, things will be getting more and more introspective and less and less concerned with politics. Do not get me wrong: politically-inclined art is a neces­sity of life, and it can be and sometimes is great, but there is no more powder left in this particular keg. You have paid your patriotic dues more than anyone else, Ms. DiFranco — time to pass the baton, listen to your heart, and sing about your family, because, so it seems to me, that seems to be your chief concern these days. Leave the protest songs to the younger generation — people like Pete Seeger, for instance.

Check "Which Side Are You On" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Which Side Are You On" (MP3) on Amazon

Ani DiFranco: Red Letter Year

ANI DIFRANCO: RED LETTER YEAR (2008)

1) Red Letter Year; 2) Alla This; 3) Present/Infant; 4) Smiling Underneath; 5) Way Tight; 6) Emancipated Minor; 7) Good Luck; 8) The Atom; 9) Round A Pole; 10) Landing Gear; 11) Star Matter; 12) Red Letter Year Reprise.

2008 may have been a red letter year for Ani's country, which is what the album title is «subtly» trying to tell us, but for Ani herself that year was 2007, when she had her first baby. With less free time on her hands than usual, yet still not willing to forsake the one-album-per-year routine (God knows what this world will come to if it forgets about her existence for three hundred and sixty five days), she released her first official retrospective package, titled Canon and picturing a cannon (puns! puns! puns!). Despite some predictably lame selections mixed in with the classics, on the general art plane it must have been a good move — not only did the world get to re­mem­ber what Ms. DiFranco used to be in the good old days, when she would still stoop to using the guitar as an ins­trument rather than a sonic prop, but it also gave her some breathing space to put a little more work than usual in the next record.

Meaning that Red Letter Year, although not quite reaching up to the pleasantly-mediocre level of Knuckle Down, is at least less generally irritating than Reprieve. With mother cares at hand, she does not have that good an opportunity to focus on her political anger; and with a full band in the studio once again, chances are that not every song is centered around an uninspired, meaning­less pummelling of her acoustic six-string. This is not to say that I honestly liked any of the songs. But at least I was honestly indifferent to them rather than honestly desiring to shove them down the songwriter's throat.

The most prominent political curses come at the beginning, but the predictable anti-Bush jabs and troop condolences lose much of their potential obnoxiousness by hiding behind dense arrange­ments: reverb, echo, chimes, and New Age effects on the title track, U2-ish rebounding guitars on 'Alla This'. After that, the band sincerely tries to introduce teensy bits of diversity on each new track; they never succeed properly, but they do take away Ani's ability to torture the listener. The best song is probably 'The Atom', if you listen to it long enough to appreciate the professionalism of the build-up from minimalistic acoustic mantra to psychedelic freakout — somebody must have been a good fan of Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.

For me, the best thing about it all is 'Red Letter Year Reprise', which is not so much a reprise as a friendly, loose jazz jam between all concerned. In general, it's just six minutes of poorly coordi­nated free-form horn noise, but it contains a paradox — it just feels so much more liberating in es­sence than any single word-containing song on this album, recorded by an artist that is suppo­sed to be the biggest liberator of them all. For this nice, unexpected touch Red Letter Year de­ser­ves a hateless thumbs down rather than a hateful one. Also, amazingly, the entire year of 2009 went on by without a new DiFranco album, suggesting that perhaps her newly-found family life is steering her into the right direction, after all.

Ani DiFranco: Reprieve

ANI DIFRANCO: REPRIEVE (2006)

1) Hypnotized; 2) Subconscious; 3) In The Margins; 4) Nicotine; 5) Decree; 6) 78% H₂0; 7) Millennium Theater; 8) Half-Assed; 9) Reprieve; 10) A Spade; 11) Unrequited; 12) Shroud; 13) Reprise.

If, for some reason, your subconscious decrees to be hypnotized by Reprieve, a half-assed per­formance of Ani DiFranco's millen­nium theater that is 78% H₂0 and 22% shroud of nicotine, then it is well in the margins of remaining unrequited. That sentence takes care of all the songs on this album, with the exception of 'A Spade' which is exactly what this album is. A spade.

Since I am no longer capable of taking the lead while talking about Ani albums, let me restrict myself to a few personal, subjective, and — I confess — vindictive comments on this not-so-much informative as panegyric description from the site of Righteous Babe Records (who says Ani and her associates have not stooped to studying the tactics of The Enemy?):

"Every new album from singer/songwriter/guitarist Ani DiFranco gives listeners a reason to get excited about music all over again (well, I certainly AM excited about the number of times one single artist can fuck things up — G. S.), and Reprieve is certainly no exception. Across 12 tracks, DiFranco ignites more of her signature blend of poetry, politics and musicianship. (Yep, she ignites it all right, but how can anything that drenched with repetition, predictability, and lack of invention ever burn? — G. S.).

"Ani and touring bassist Todd Sickafoose (the guy's name is almost begging for some lame pun, but let us refrain from cheapness — G. S.) are the only two players on the new album — some­thing you'd never guess from its rich and detailed sound (almost an understatement in regards to a record on which about half of the songs feature nothing but acoustic guitar and vocals — G. S.). In addition to the usual array of acoustic and electric guitars for which she is justly noted, Ani can be heard on keyboards, drums, and other instruments ('can be heard' is right — you really have to work for it; I did spot some piano keys lightly pressed on a couple introductions, but I'm still looking for those goddamn drums — G. S.), while Todd contributes not only bass but wur­litzer, pump organ, piano and "fakey-bakey" trumpet and strings (Yes, I DID wonder about whose idea it was to embellish the signature acoustic boredom with all sorts of "fakey-bakey" toilet noises. Maybe the puns SHOULD start coming, after all — G. S.).

"The album was tracked in her New Orleans studio in early 2005 during a break in her usually heavy touring schedule. Forced to leave the master recordings behind when she evacuated before Hurricane Katrina, she drove back into the city to retrieve them just three days after the levees broke. (In a self-sacrificial act of political bravery, no doubt. Goddammit, here is ONE good thing that could have come out from Hurricane Katrina and — obviously, the pun mood is upon me — she just blew it — G. S.). From there she headed back to overdub in her hometown of Buf­falo with whatever instruments happened to be on hand. Chief among them a vintage omnichord and a modern "cheesy synthesizer" which entailed "trying to use uncool sounds in cool ways," as she puts it (Come now, Ms. DiFranco, why don't you leave "cheesy synthesizers" and "vintage omnichords" to the likes of Animal Collective. You generally have big trouble using cool sounds in cool ways, as you have showed time and time over again with your jazz career; what makes you think 'uncool' sounds will fare any better? — G. S.).

"Between the forced evacuation and the time off on the road, Ani found herself concentrating on the process of recording to a degree she had never done before, and the resulting album is the clearest demonstration yet of her talents as a producer (Who the heck had the nerve to write this crap? Her "talents as a producer" — are you kidding me? Since when does overdubbing a few electronic farts over an acoustic melody count as "producing"? — G. S.). Unconstrained by the pressures of touring, she was able to take her time with the record, and the end result is an overall sound that is as clear and succinct as her lyrics have always been (I like the "unconstrained" bit — as if somebody were actually constraining the lady into touring. She is her own boss, isn't she? And I seriously doubt that even a vintage fan will clearly perceive Reprieve as 'that particular re­cord that she, like, REALLY took her time with' — G. S.).

"While not intended to be taken as a concept album in any way, the songs on Reprieve do pro­vide a cohesive picture of what’s been on Ani’s mind lately during turbulent times on the per­so­nal, cultural, and global front (With Ani, times are always turbulent, and usually turbulent in the exact same ways; this sentence easily applies to any given album in her career — G. S.). From the opening encounter of “Hypnotized” to the call to action against patriarchy in the spoken-word title track to the conflict between “the house of conformity” and the ability to make art in the final song, “Shroud,” this is classic Ani territory (Indeed, and she sticks to it faithfully. I do realize that the question 'how many more calls to action against patriarchy does one person need from another one?' provokes the obligatory answer 'as many as it takes to finally goad one into action', but surely something is not working too well if so many calls to action have provoked so little response? Maybe it's the wrong playground? Maybe she ought to have a run at the Senate, already? — G. S.). It’s a place where individual songs can’t be easily separated into “personal” and “political” categories, because those concerns inevitably overlap in complex and nuanced ways (Obviously, if you let politics into your personal life, the two will overlap. But it usually makes for rather bad art, not to mention increasing the risk of psychiatric problems — G. S.).

"Ani describes Reprieve as rooted in the Crescent City (This woman really works in strange and mysterious ways. But maybe she meant Crescent City, Illinois? According to the latest census, it has 631 inhabitants, and, since this must be just about the total number of people that would love this album, a connection is possible — G. S.), and it so happens that there’s a single direct re­fe­rence to that town in the album’s centerpiece, “Millennium Theater.” The line “New Orleans bi­des her time” in the middle of this scathing critique of the current Republican regime might sound like a response to Hurricane Katrina, but in fact the song was written well before the disaster that has devastated the city, about a crisis that took no one but the presidential ad­ministration by sur­prise (How fortunate, a cute little coincidence that gives one something to write about when there is nothing to write about. 'The album's centerpiece'? I honestly thought it was one of the blandest throwaways — G. S.). Like just about everything else on Reprieve, “Millennium Theater” finds Ani speaking her mind, singing from her heart, and playing music like her life — like all of our lives — depended on it (Look, I have nothing against Ani speaking her mind, singing from her heart, and playing like her life depended on it, but leave ME out of this, won't you? If my life de­pended on an album like this, I'd have to be committed — G. S.).

Well, at least you, the reader, cannot complain now: you've heard it from both sides. Make your choice now or forever hold your peace. Mine, of course, is a decisive thumbs down. In fact, against my rules, I honestly could not stand more than two listens. Somebody sign this woman to Hollywood Records, please. Make Diane Warren write her songs for her.

Ani DiFranco: Knuckle Down

ANI DIFRANCO: KNUCKLE DOWN (2005)

1) Knuckle Down; 2) Studying Stones; 3) Manhole; 4) Sunday Morning; 5) Modulation; 6) Seeing Eye Dog; 7) Lag Time; 8) Parameters; 9) Callous; 10) Paradigm; 11) Minerva; 12) Recoil.

For some reason, Ani has reverted back to writing songs instead of creating them, if you get my meaning. Formally, the only change is that she has amply shared production duties with fellow singer-songwriter Joe Henry, and that a bunch of new hands are guesting on the album, not the least among them violin maestro Andrew Bird in person. Informally, this is simply her best effort since... let's see... gosh, how far do we have to scroll up?... since Up Up Up Up Up, definitely, or even since Dilate, not so definitely.

For one thing, it is hard to remember the last time she recorded something as tender and poignant as 'Studying Stones' — not only are the lyrics, advertising restraint and calm, suggesting that she may be trying to exorcise the deamon of cheap social activism, but she sings it real pretty, and meshes well with Bird's trademark morose violin part. Then, a few steps down the block comes 'Modulation', combining a steady rhythm, a gloomy production, and a catchy vocal melody — and a mention of death to boot. For the record, she almost never mentioned death before — in fact, it is rather hard to imagine a more life-oriented singer-songwriter than DiFranco. Coinciden­tally — or not? — in between Educated Guess and this record, she did suffer the demise of her father, and this may be the explanation between quite a few humane and moving twists that you will encounter on Knuckle Down.

Of course, there is still the obligatory piece of spoken poetry to sit through ('Parameters'), but ev­en that one is possible to forgive, since (a) it is set to a slightly hypnotizing piece of mind-blow­ing ambient sonics, sort of a cross between Brian Eno and Lou Reed, and (b) it is not politically oriented. Also, as usual, this is a long record, and, sooner or later, the expected amorphous acoustic pat­ches of deep-sounding nothing start to accumulate and gnaw on the brain. But every­thing is spread out quite evenly, and it does make sense to sit through the whole thing since the very last track, 'Recoil', is the third best on the album. Slide guitars and violins rule the day, and at the very end, she admits that "I'm just sitting here in this sty, strewn with half written songs, taking one breath at a time — nothing much going on". Ten years at least have we been waiting for this sort of confession; how ironic that she actually pronounces it within one of her few songs that is, by contrast, written to near-perfection.

Some have expressly called Knuckle Down one of her most accessible records, and, no doubt, some of the more fanatical activists would even brand it a folk-pop sellout after the brave soul-baring that were Evolve and Educated Guess. Well, I'll bite: I prefer to have my soul-baring coupled with an interesting riff or chorus, and I'll take the «accessible» DiFranco over the «inac­cessible» DiFranco (or, rather, over the «pathetically boring» DiFranco, since there is really no­thing particularly «inaccessible» about her «inaccessible» records) any time of day.

On a sidenote, I happened to come across an interesting conference talk title the other day. The session was American Studies, the speaker was, of course, a lady (student), and the title was: «Why Do Men Hate Ani DiFranco? The Connection Between Women Rock Musicians and the Image of Feminism». This made me wonder, so I Googled «I hate Ani DiFranco» — and, what do you know, it looks like there is hardly what you could call a correlation between masculine sex and hatred for Ani DiFranco. (Of course, I could also mention that the absolute majority of male posters hate Ani DiFranco because she is boring and obnoxious, not because she has any connec­tion to the image of feminism, but then we all know they're lying, don't we? Men hate Ani Di­Franco because she is a woman. Women hate Ani DiFranco because... uh, because she is bisexual. Or because she got pregnant. Or something like that. Nobody hates anybody because their music is shitty. That'd be so uncool).

Anyway, I do not hate Ani DiFranco, but I do hate the fact that for every good record, she puts out three piles of nasal acoustic wasteland. Knuckle Down is a fairly good one, though. Thumbs up, for a change.

Ani DiFranco: Educated Guess

ANI DIFRANCO: EDUCATED GUESS (2004)

1) Platforms; 2) Swim; 3) Educated Guess; 4) Origami; 5) Bliss Like This; 6) The True Story Of What Was; 7) Bo­dily; 8) You Each Time; 9) Animal; 10) Grand Canyon; 11) Company; 12) Rain Check; 13) Akimbo; 14) Bubble.

One may easily deduce whether this here reviewer was enthralled or not by Educated Guess, so­cially conscious singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco 3,456th studio album, from the fact that it took him three listens and a couple read-ups on other people's reviews and descriptions to understand that it is, in fact, hugely different from her previous release, Evolve, in that it completely drops her soft-jazz band and, once again, reverts the artist to fully acoustic, fully individual mode.

Honestly, I did not even notice that. And as far as I am concerned, this only means that it makes no goddamn difference any more. Just fifty more minutes of time wasted on melodies, words, and feelings that bring nothing new — or nothing good, for that matter — to the table. In fact, that statement is pretty much definitive: there is not a single track here that could even begin to be de­scribed as a «highlight». «Lowlights», yes, not the least of them her usually flat beatnik rant 'Grand Canyon' where she proclaims that "People, we are standing at ground zero of the feminist revolution... coolest F-word ever deserves a fucking shout! I mean, why can't all decent men and women call themselves feminists, out of respect for those who fought for this?" Gimme a fuckin' break there, lady.

The saddest realization of all is, of course, that by now she has completely resigned to preaching to the choir. Long-term fans cannot go wrong with this or anything else, but how can you expect to make new converts if all you're offering them is a bunch of on-the-spot constructed, sloppy, dissonant chord sequences worthy of just about every guitar player on this planet with two or three years of playing experience? How do you expect intelligent people to follow you if each of your songs places such dreadful importance on the lyrics (more spoken than sung), yet, for all we know, there are only two topics concerned: «Treat me like a human being instead of like a fuck­hole, and then we'll go on talking» and «Fight the machine, fight the machine». Do butterflies and coloured rainbows even exist for this woman? Thumbs down. At this point, the only remedy that can be prescribed for the patient is an album of surf rock covers.

Ani DiFranco: Evolve

ANI DIFRANCO: EVOLVE (2003)

1) Promised Land; 2) In The Way; 3) Icarus; 4) Slide; 5) O My My; 6) Evolve; 7) Shrug; 8) Phase; 9) Here For Now; 10) Second Intermission; 11) Serpentine; 12) Welcome To.

The album won Ani DiFranco a Grammy Award in 2004... for Best Recording Package. Reading this of­ficial information on Wikipedia or in any other source after you have heard the album gives a clear impression of bitter irony, if not indirect insult. First, it is hard to imagine somebody as right­eous as Ani to care one second about the Grammy people in the first place. Second, it is even harder to ima­gine the Grammy people actually taking the time to listen to an Ani DiFranco album. Third, in spite of both the first and the second, this Grammy decision summarizes my feelings about Evolve to near-perfection.

Since it can be easily shown that Ms. DiFranco knows how to create interesting melodies, the ob­vious reasoning is that, by the time Reckoning and Revelling came along, she had developed the notion that «interesting melodies» are an insult to honest artistry and intellectual audiences. Thus, her newly-established motto can be briefly summarized as «Hooks are for NRA members». In the place of hooks, we proceed to get Messages and Free Jazz, DiFranco-style.

Granted, after the «time-suspended» illusion of Revelling, Evolve has more rhythm to it, and some of the ideas are moderately interesting. 'In The Way', in particular, gets a quirky little funky riff with hypnotizing potential not unlike the one exploited to the max by James Brown on 'Sex Machine' — except that, of course, Ani is no James Brown, and even when she tries to get into overdrive, she cannot sustain the tension for five minutes, meaning that the riff is essentially was­ted. Another classy, sardonic riff, acoustic this time, is lost on the title track, which has nothing else to go for it.

The whole thing just screams out «lazy, lazy, lazy...» louder than almost any other DiFranco al­bum up to that point. The only song on the entire album that is anywhere close to «completeness» is 'Here For Now', which takes half a minute to find its groove, introduces said groove as a quiet little Latin dance number, variegates it with a quiet, arythmic chorus, and locks the door behind it in an economic three minutes time — whereas most of the raw, blurry, impressionistic numbers overstay their welcome for at least four or five.

The nadir, quite predictably, is 'Serpentine', a ten-minute rant on civil liberties and other related shit that is the younger, but even more obnoxious, brother of 'Self Evident' from the last record. "The difference between you and me, baby, is I get fucked up when I'm alone", she states midway through; yep, she must have been particularly lonesome when recording this album.

One thing that is not quite clear to me is why anyone would really want to bother falling for Ani's amateurish experimentation in the realm of modern jazz. Considering just how many superior jazz musicians, ancient and modern, there are in each and every aspect of the genre, Evolve could only hope to work if she'd found a decent way of integrating the new influences into her old style, for instance, start playing the guitar the way she did on her first album, while all the brass players and percussionists around her supplied the external arrangements. Instead, she somehow convin­ced herself that once you set up some thin, bland, unevocative groove, all you have left to do is support it with another meandering poem sung from the bottom of the heart.

Not recommended for anyone except the staunchest Ani adepts, with the possible exception of 'Here For Now'; in fact, a track like 'Serpentine', unless you happen to be an innate serial killer mas­cherading as a braindead ultra-liberal activist, can turn sane people off the dame forever. To be honest, there is quite a bit of decent poetry on here, too ('Icarus', 'Second Intermission') — my wild guess is that she only writes stuff like 'Serpentine' and 'Self Evident' when she's having her period or some­thing. Thumbs down, all the same; good poetry is Pulitzer Prize stuff — without a half-decent melody to accompany it, all you can hope for is a Grammy Award for Best Recording Package.

Ani DiFranco: So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter

ANI DIFRANCO: SO MUCH SHOUTING, SO MUCH LAUGHTER (2002)

CD I: 1) Swan Dive; 2) Letter To A John / Tambouritza Lingua; 3) Grey; 4) Cradle And All; 5) Whatall Is Nice; 6) What How When Where; 7) To The Teeth; 8) Revelling; 9) Napoleon; 10) Shrug; 11) Welcome To; CD II: 1) Comes A Time; 2) Ain't That The Way; 3) Dilate; 4) Gratitude; 5) 32 Flavors; 6) Loom / Pulse; 7) Not A Pretty Girl; 8) Self Evident; 9) Reckoning; 10) My IQ; 11) Jukebox; 12) You Had Time; 13) Rock Paper Scissors.

To summarize the lacklustre fizzle-out of the second stage of Ani's career, up comes a fittingly lacklustre live album whose main purpose is to show that the lady has learned to be just as obno­xious and boring onstage as she is in the studio — even if she herself has always said that she felt far more comfortable playing live than recording.

"I don't know why the fuck I play acoustic guitar, I hate that acoustic guitar sound", she greets us on the very first track, producing a louder-than-necessary first chord. A funny, innocent joke, but gruesomely symbolic: many people, no doubt, will want to ask the same question upon compa­ring the bland minimalist acoustic blabber of her XXIst century sound with the awesome style that she used to have years ago and that is still, in bits and pieces, evident on Living In Clip. The setlist for this particular show conveniently drops everything prior to 1994 (with the lonesome ex­ception of 'Gratitude' from Not So Soft, only proving the rule), and focuses intently upon her last three albums, with the top share of the cake going to Reckoning / Revelling.

Ani's little jazz-funk band does a faithful job of keeping up, and they may even be enjoying the proceedings, but it is hard to guess, because the emphasis is on staying fairly close to the quiet, restrained arrangements on the originals, with next to no jamming or improvisation pieces at all. Actually, it doesn't look like she is in great need of the band at all. Most of the songs from the la­test album, for instance, come from the Revelling part, i. e. introspective underwritten acoustic ballads that find little use for the talents of Ravi Best, trumpet, Shane Endsley, trumpet, Todd Horton, trumpet, Daren Hahn, drums, Jason Mercer, bass, Hans Teuber, clarinet, Julie Wolf, keyboards, vocals. (Ani's interaction with Julie is supposed to form some integral artistic part in the structuring of the second CD, subtitled Girls' Singing Night, but the whole thing never really goys far beyond a little dueting, a trifle backing vocals, and some mildly humorous banter).

To put it bluntly, the good tunes have nothing more to say than they did in the confines of the stu­dio, and sometimes less ('Napoleon' and 'What How When Where', in particular, suffer greatly from the lack of studio gimmickry that used to make one pay any attention to them in the first place). Then there are the bad tunes, of which there are many; I find the setlist quite depressing, to be honest — and previewing some numbers off the upcoming Evolve is hardly a profitable bu­siness, either, given the ever-continuing nosedive on that album as well.

But none of this sucks as much as the decision to dedicate a large chunk of the record to nausea­ting political propaganda. It is not enough that she recreates the seven-and-a-half minute torture of 'To The Teeth' in its entirety; one of the new numbers ('Self Evident') is a nine-minute rant on the evils of American politics, spewed off in a quasi-improvised (actually, quite carefully rehear­sed, I think) manner to a boring lounge jazz background.

Let us get this straight: I am aware, and everyone should be, that the lady's schtick is to combine music with social work, and that, if, like Alice Cooper, you believe music and politics should ne­ver mingle, you should stay away from artists like Ani altogether. I do not share that belief; I have no problem with John Lennon singing 'Power To The People' or with people like John Fo­gerty or Robert Smith or Neil Young writing anti-Bush diatribes and setting them to music. After all, music is feelings, and, if you make good music, why should you be confining your feelings to girls, cars, and transcendental meditation instead of expressing your position on relevant issues?

But it is a different thing altogether if you sacrifice music in favor of political propaganda. If the lady believes her true mission is to go out there on stage and enflame people's hearts against the NRA and George W. Bush and the whored-out media etc. etc., that's fine; declare this a political rally and leave your guitar at home. 'Self Evident' is not even poetry — it starts out innocently enough ("Us people are just poems, we are 90% metaphor..."), but pretty soon derails into a series of platitudes with the legions of supporters howling in unison in all the appropriate stops. I will ad­mit, though, that some of the lines, e. g. "Take away our playstations and we are a third world nation", are brilliant. That is the most I can admit.

In toto, re: the album title, there is, indeed, plenty of shouting — on behalf of all the hardcore De­mocrats in the audience that merely dropped in to check if the sun were still shining, or whether DiFranco was still going strong against the NRA, which is approximately the same thing — and there is plenty of laughter, too, mostly on behalf of Ani herself, who is occasionally trying to de­flate the ser­mon aspect of it all by giggling like the quintessential schoolgirl (I find the contrast cringeworthy, but that's just me). What is seriously lacking in between all the shouting and all the laughter is any sort of viable reason why the heck this woman is still being defined as a «singer, guitarist, and songwriter», when she is doing her best to effectively sabotage all three of these aspects. Thumbs down, egads. At this stage, apparently even Robert Christgau gave up on her (formerly a major fan, he hasn't written one single review of any of her albums since 2002).

Ani DiFranco: Reckoning/Revelling

ANI DIFRANCO: REVELLING / RECKONING (2001)

CD I: 1) Ain't That The Way; 2) O.K.; 3) Garden Of Simple; 4) Tamburitza Lingua; 5) Marrow; 6) Heartbreak Even; 7) Harvest; 8) Kazoointoit; 9) Whatall Is Nice; 10) What How When Where; 11) Fierce Flawless; 12) Rock Paper Scissors; 13) Beautiful Night; CD II: 1) Your Next Bold Move; 2) This Box Contains; 3) Reckoning; 4) So What; 5) Prison Prism; 6) Imagine That; 7) Flood Waters; 8) Grey; 9) Subdivision; 10) Old Old Song; 11) Sick Of Me; 12) Don't Nobody Know; 13) School Night; 14) That Was My Love; 15) Revelling; 16) In Here.

No one understood why Ani forgot to release a new studio album in 2000. An intentional refusal to join the happy crowds of artists cashing in on the «turn-of-the-millennium» chance? Or just one of nature's unpredictable errors? Fortunately, already the next year gave a clear answer: she was simply hoarding up material for a double release. Revelling/Reckoning is one hundred and twenty minutes of prime time Ani DiFranco, give or take a few.

The two parts are neatly divided into the Revelling and Reckoning parts (although, for some rea­son, both title tracks are asymmetrically placed in the second half). We'll get to the Revelling part a little later; afore everything, it needs to be said that your love and admiration for DiFranco will be put to the sorest, grizzliest test ever with Reckoning — one hour of arch-lazy, rambling, un­memorable acoustic tunes that aren't even so much tunes as raw mood pieces, envelopping end­less streams of the lady's poetry.

It is time to confess here that I am not much of a poetry fan, with my own admiration strictly re­served to a handful of well-known greats; but I do concede that sometimes clever poetry, set to rudimentary muzak, can strike a deep chord — e. g., Leonard Cohen. Yet even Cohen allowed himself to stoop to the level of us mortals by molding his poetry in a pop music format, which ne­ver ever hurt it, but, instead, made it more poignant. And, occasionally, so did DiFranco. But not here. Play 'Both Hands' next to any of these musical embryos — embryos? nay, blastulae rather — and if this is «maturation» or «artistic progression», I renounce «art» forever.

"How sick of me must you be by now?" asks she the provocative question midway through the acoustic bog. Of course, it's a personal, one-to-one song about relationships rather than a taunt to potential or disenchanted fans, but we are all in this game, and, personally, Reckoning makes me pretty sick. «You have to be in the proper mood for it», the fans say in their reviews, but I cannot envision a mood in which I'd ever want to put on this record instead of Ani's magnificent — in comparison — debut album, let alone miriads of more passionate, more cleverly designed, more musical acoustic experiences from singer-songwriters all over the globe. Balderdash.

The first half of the album is, however, a different story. It is much more fleshed out, less mini­malistic, and continues more in the vein of unpretentious folk-jazz-fusion of Little Plastic Castle than the formulaic «liberal gung-ho» trash of To The Teeth. There is even a mildly funny musi­cal joke number ('What How When Where'), whose funny looping of every monosyllabic ques­tion word found in the English language may make you smile and whose friendly acoustic / brass interplay will reassure you that she still knows how to write real songs, even though the liberal arts devil is permanently swaying her off the right track.

Upbeat constructions like 'Ain't That The Way', 'O.K.', and 'Fierce Flawless' are nothing to write home about, but nice and listenable; mood pieces like 'Tamburitza Lingua' are much better deve­loped than any of the mood pieces on Reckoning (as simple as its acoustic melody is, it's a fri­ckin' melody, well assisted by creepy sci-fi whoooosh! blasts in the background); and only a few of the numbers match the yawn power of Reckoning ('Marrow', 'Garden Of Simple'). In short, Revelling gives the impression of a real, if somewhat stagnated, album, while Reckoning gives the impression of an afterthought... «oh, wait a minute guys, I still got those two poetry-filled notebooks, if I don't do something with them right now, the world's spiritual heritage may not be deemed complete by the next generation... how much studio time have we got left, anyway?»

Plus, I intentionally refuse to comment on any of the lyrics on here — if only for the reason that, for every subject and statement, you can already find an earlier one that is at least equally well, if not better, expressed. Political and social statements; psychological one-sided conversations with boyfriends and girlfriends; random life observations converted into cosmic metaphors, you know the drift. At this point, I am no longer able to take all that verbosity seriously.

To sum up, if Little Plastic Castle showed some musical promise, what with all the cautious jazz-funk experimentation and stuff, Revelling, at best, runs on inertia, and, at worst, drives into a wall; whereas Reckoning is easily the least rewarding DiFranco listening experience up to this point — at least To The Teeth has its pragmatic use at propaganda rallies. Overall, a predictable thumbs down, although 'What How When Where' is one of her funnest creations. (And if you are an admirer, determined to scorn me for choosing this lengthy album's one joke tune as the best song on it, hey, that's hardly my fault. Blame the author, I say).

Ani DiFranco: To The Teeth

ANI DIFRANCO: TO THE TEETH (1999)

1) To The Teeth; 2) Soft Shoulder; 3) Wish I May; 4) Freakshow; 5) Going Once; 6) Hello Birmingham; 7) Back Back Back; 8) Swing; 9) Carry You Around; 10) Cloud Blood; 11) The Arrivals Gate; 12) Providence; 13) I Know This Bar.

God, this is horrible. One certainly does not expect an intelligent folk-rock masterpiece from an album that is the artist's second-within-the-year to overflow the sixty-minute mark (actually, this one runs over seventy), but a few decent numbers here and there from someone of DiFranco's ca­liber could still be welcome.

Instead, To The Teeth gives us seventy minutes of plodding, insanely boring, unimaginably un­derwritten mid-tempo rhythms that sound like they were conceived in a disfocused, debilitated cannabis haze. I would venture a guess that no one but the deepest, dangerous, society-threa­tening fanatic, whose wildest dre­am is to open a tattoo parlor next to Ani DiFranco's place of residence, could willingly listen to this more than one time.

For one thing, not a single of these songs should be legally allowed to run more than three minu­tes, yet many of them cross the six or seven minute mark as if each aspired to be a frickin' 'Deso­lation Row' or something. In a few cases, this could be understood if she were intent on driving her little backing jazz-funk band into jam mode; but whoever these guys are and whatever their talents may be, they are strictly prohibited from displaying band. It could also be pardoned had she remembered how to play those cool choppy rhythms like she used to when she had no band at all; but there is not a single song all across these seventy minutes on which the guitar playing would rise above rudimentary (at least, by her own standards).

Then there are the politics. She returns to the battleground fully armed — «to the teeth», indeed — and, from the first minutes, engages in a ghost battle with shadows of MTV, NBC, CBS, NRA and tells us to «open fire on each weapon manufacturer while he's giving head to some republi­can senator». Apparently, the song — and, most likely, the entire album as such — was inspired by the Columbine massacre, but righteous anger is no excuse for writing lame lyrics, setting them to non-existent melodies and letting the blood drip for eight awful minutes. Further down the line, Woody Guthrie and Martin Luther King have guest appearances as well; Angela Davis might have been on the list of invitations, too, but the catch is, she's not dead yet.

Then there are the awful embarrassments. 'Freakshow' sounds one, nay, two hundred percent like an Alanis Morissette outtake from the Little Pill era; Ani goes as far as to modulate her singing according to the Morisette pattern — what the hell? The main reason we may be interested in her in the first place is that she presents an embraceable alternative to Alanis, and now this? Then there is 'Swing', on which she acknowledges her respect for hip-hop culture by sharing the spot­light with Corey Parker, improvising a little rap about her. The effect will probably seem pitiful even to supporters of the culture, let alone the doomed bigots who prefer real music.

Then there is the overall rating. Need I even spell it out? Even Robert Christgau hated the record, and no other prominent critic raved more about DiFranco than the enigmatic old goat.

Ani DiFranco: Up Up Up Up Up Up

ANI DIFRANCO: UP UP UP UP UP UP (1999)

1) 'Tis Of Thee; 2) Virtue; 3) Come Away From It; 4) Jukebox; 5) Angel Food; 6) Angry Any More; 7) Everest; 8) Up Up Up Up Up Up; 9) Know Now Then; 10) Trickle Down; 11) Hat Shaped Hat.

"I'm not angry any more", she says, "we learn like the trees how to bend". The song, 'Angry Any More', is a fairly important piece — if it is not tricking us, then it allows us to take a peek at whe­re all of the aggression and suffering come from. (Freud, of course, would have a field day). But even more significantly, it has to be taken as a sort of manifesto, that the uncontrolled angst and rage have been gotten over and from now on we are going to see intelligence tempering hot emo­tions instead of being yoked by them. At least, that's what we are promised; it would be unreaso­nable to expect someone like Ani to keep those promises, though.

Musically, this is not much different from Little Plastic Castle: partly soft acoustic stuff, partly quiet jazz stuff that veers between lounge and avantgarde without bothering to spell out the dif­ference in a distinct way. The soft acoustic stuff is predictably elegant, sometimes begging to be nominated for the category of "cathartic", like 'Everest', a delicate midnight waltz with DiFranco's guitar and new band member Jason Mercer's bass swaying round each other like old-fashioned dance partners — but the overall sound is a bit too stifled and, at the same time, too roughly un­derproduced to really qualify as a masterpiece.

And pretty much the same words apply to everything else. My fond feeling for the album is not because of jaw-dropping melodies or terrific playing, but because it drives us into unexpectedly sadder territory — many of the songs sound like laments that, indeed, contain no anger, but only pure sorrow and a touch of bitterness. Eight minutes of 'Come Away From It' may seem way too much on paper, but they have a point: it is eight minutes of begging that, in effect, symbolize eight hundred, eight thousand, eight million minutes of begging, as much as it takes to get the point of your begging across. What is she begging for, though? "What makes you so lavish that you can afford to spend every sober moment feeling angry and bored?... Are you trying to tell me this world just isn't beautiful enough?.." One could say that the song's antagonist is Ani herself — the Ani of Not So Soft and Not A Pretty Girl — rather than some unnamed lover that we hones­tly don't give two shits about.

With each new album, the percentage of enigmatic songs is steadily increasing — I don't know if this can be interpreted as squeezing out the Buffalonian and soaking in the New Yorker, but it de­finitely makes it harder and harder to dismiss the tunes as simplistic and generic. The soft dark growl of 'Angel Food', for instance, with its funky waves and out-of-nowhere aboriginal hunt calls and its pre-post-beatnik lyrics, is a purely impressionistic matter. So is 'Know Now Then', whose lyrics vaguely refer to some other sort of girl-girl relationship but whose «astral jazz» tex­tures almost might suggest the relationship is taking place on Mars. And Mars is actually referred to during the thirteen minutes of 'Hat-Shaped Hat', a whacky funky jam decidedly about nothing — actually, the weakest spot on the record, because Ani's outfit does not possess true jam power, and this time around, there are no atmospheric currents to hold the listener's attention, so if this is not a «space-padder» par excellence, I do not know what is.

Oh, I would really have liked to give the record a thumbs up, but now that I remember the album title, I just can't do it — it would feel like I'm being manipulated into the rating. On the other hand, the converse rating would also be wrong; as much as tracks like 'Hat-Shaped Hat' suggest that the lady should try getting into needlework, and as much as I miss her awesome guitar chops that are, for the most part, concealed either due to an outgrowth of modesty or an outgrowth of blisters, they are not enough to neutralize the honestly good moments of the record. Partly point­less, partly pretty, and we harbor enough liberal guilt to let it go with a word of kindness.

Ani DiFranco: Little Plastic Castle

ANI DIFRANCO: LITTLE PLASTIC CASTLE (1998)

1) Little Plastic Castles; 2) Fuel; 3) Gravel; 4) As Is; 5) Two Little Girls; 6) Deep Dish; 7) Loom; 8) Pixie; 9) Swan Dive; 10) Glass House; 11) Independence Day; 12) Pulse.

Welcome to the world of soft jazz. It is almost frightening how consistently mellow this album is — almost bordering on «adult contemporary» in a few spots, and completely jettisoning the in­die-rock flourishes of Dilate as if they never existed. Maybe she was feeling «trapped» in that ae­sthetics, or perhaps everything is much simpler: a couple friendly drinks at the bar with a few lo­cal jazz musicians and presto, all of a sudden your affection for the trombone has grown three hundred percent overnight.

Regardless, for Ani's level, this is her «easy listening» album. Unfortunately, in the light of her modest songwriting talents, it translates as «possessing very little staying power». Dilate was go­od when it was flashing out its sharp edges, song after song; Plastic Castle patiently smoothes out all these edges until the whole environment becomes thoroughly child-safe — and unpala­table to those with more capricious tastes.

The album's major piece is, of course, 'Pulse'. Starts off as a tender, caring ballad (one of those rare displays of pure human emotion untainted by feminist reasoning), then, several minutes later, becomes a late-night jazz jam / lullaby with guest star Jon Hassell contributing a lengthy trom­bone solo. The music sits firmly three feet away from the line that separates «pretty» from «gor­geous», but there is a modestly introspective quality about it that would immediately brand any­one who'd try to dismiss the whole thing with the seal of cynicism. Technically, Ani's band does a great job on the piece, so much so that they almost threaten to turn her into but one of the essen­tial components of the whole thing. (Not that I would mind).

As for the actual songs — there is the faraway nastiness of the acoustic riff on 'Pixie', and the zy­deco flourishes on the title track are pleasant when they arrive to drag this ballad out of its lan­guishing mediocrity, and the studio version of 'Gravel' is as sharply staccato-driven as the live version; but, of course, her Grammy Award nomination came for 'Glass House', the album's ful­lest-sounding song and also one of the blandest, a generic indie-rock angst number. (Guess it was at least loud enough for the Grammy people to notice). Really, what's to discuss? This is just Ani, a little calmer than usual. But still coming up with the regular verbal bliss: "May their souls rest easy now that lynching has been frowned upon / And we've moved to the electric chair".

Feel free to give it a thumbs up if you are one of those late-night wine-glass candle-light soft-porn types, with 'Pulse' right up your alley, of if you are one of those types who think that guitar distor­tion is nothing but pretentious uglification and that the sax-and-brushes thing is really where it's at. From my own point of view, I'd rather abstain.

Ani DiFranco: Living In Clip

ANI DIFRANCO: LIVING IN CLIP (1997)

1) Whatever; 2) Wherever; 3) Gravel; 4) Shy; 5) Joyful Girl; 6) Hide And Seek; 7) Napoleon; 8) I’m No Heroine; 9) Amazing Grace; 10) Anticipate; 11) Tiptoe; 12) Sorry I Am; 13) The Diner/The Slant; 14) 32 Flavors; 15) Out Of Range; 16) Untouchable Face; 17) Shameless; 18) Distracted; 19) Adam And Eve; 20) Firedoor; 21) Both Hands; 22) Out Of Habit; 23) Every State Line; 24) Not So Soft; 25) Travel Tips; 26) Wrong With Me; 27) In Or Out; 28) We’re All Gonna Blow; 29) Letter To A John; 30) Overlap.

Ani’s prolific nature easily spreads over to the live setting: she has a never-ending «Official Boot­leg» series second in scope only to Pearl Jam (and third only to the Grateful Dead) — artistic commitment at its most maddening for completists. Non-completists, though, will most likely only want one sample of the lady’s stage creativity, and Living In Clip, essentially a 1990-96 career retrospective masking as a live 2-CD set, will do nicely.

Despite the unsettling length of this thing, its selection of songs, going heavy on recent material from Dilate but not really ignoring any of her other albums, is a great reminder of the fact that Ani DiFranco is, in fact, an accomplished songwriter (not to mention a fabulous picker) — one that she has an ugly knack of making us forget through massive overproduction. And since she honestly works her ass off in concert, playing with the same level of complexity that she shows in the studio, this passes off quite easily for a legit best-of compilation.

Most of the tracks feature her flexible power trio — herself, percussionist extraordinaire Andy Stochansky and Sara Lee on bass; ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Both Hands’, however, get unexpected symphonic arrangements from the Buffalo Philharmonic (which sort of happened to turn up at the right time in the right place) that work brilliantly in the case of the former, which gets a sort of Ravel-style bravado sheen, and not so brilliantly in the case of the latter, which gets a sort of En­nio Morricone-style heroic intro and outro for no particular reason.

Discussing all the subtle changes that are supposed to justify separate ownership of the album would make me look like an Ani fan, so let us skip directly to the nasty part. There is almost ab­solutely nothing seriously wrong with the record bar one thing: the banter. Stage banter is an art (at least when you bother to include it on live albums), and Ani is, honestly, one of the clumsiest banterers that ever ventured out under the spotlight. Simply put, her «stage persona», to me at least, sounds exaggerated and artificial. All over the place, she drops tons of giggling, silly jokes and puns, life-on-the-road anecdotes and casual blabbering with Stochansky — stuff that would sound totally okay when shared with a bunch of friends at a local barbecue, but is extremely con­trived during a live show. I know, it is supposed to signify Friendship With The Audience, but these people in the audience are not her friends, and it all gives off some strange effect, as if she were saying, «hey I’m as human as all you guys out there, so I’ll laugh till you drop and tell jokes till you cry because how else are you gonna believe it?»

In short, it would have been far more effective if she’d bothered to insert her «humor» in the actual songs rather than in between them; as it is, this occasional transformation into Jerry Sein­feld’s sis­ter only detracts from the power of her strongest numbers. Fortunately, some of the lon­ger bits are segregated into separate tracks (‘Travel Tips’, etc.) that can be easily programmed out. With that little bit of personal alteration behind us, Living In Clip is another easy thumbs up for the lady, and an excellent, definitive full-stop to the first part of her career. Bring on the next one.