Creativity, brilliance grace folk singer’s recent album

By Megan Finnerty
Features Editor

Ani DiFranco has given the world, grown so tired of corporate, prepackaged-and-sanitized-for-your-consumption music, another testimony that there's still truth and innovation in music.

"Revelling/Reckoning," the Buffalo, N.Y., native's 13th full-length solo album, is two distinct but related halves in which DiFranco looks back at her youth in the '80s and her early adulthood in "the plague of Reagan and Bush."

DiFranco started out as a shaven-headed folk singer bleeding her pain all over her self-titled debut, and since then, the petite dread-locked singer has spread her musical roots like a Banyan tree which now covers jazz, answering machines, funk, rap, folk, Prince...

The 29-song double album is massive. DiFranco weaves a dense tapestry of songs that smothers the listener in her political views, her bad breakups, her thoughts on the American family, her sex life and her introspection.

At times, DiFranco's versatile voice is hard to distinguish from the myriad of instruments used on the two albums. She has always pushed her vocals, but on "Revelling," her voice is a trumpet, a harmonica and a slow sax. She doesn't have vocal cords; she has tiny chameleons in her throat.

As always, the song writing is phenomenal. "Revelling" is blooming with fluid, funny, fast songs, while "Reckoning" is lyrically driven, slower and more thoughtful. Her arrangements — be they sparse ones of just her and her acoustic, or lush, complex ones with flutes, trumpets, a standing bass, keyboards and electric guitars — are engaging and refreshing.

But the true joy of DiFranco's music is her lyrics. DiFranco has always been willing to take that proverbial razorblade, open a vein and bleed truth until she's translucent and you can see yourself on the other side of her rib cage.

"It's rock, paper, scissors as to whether/I will get over you at all/It's hand against hand and both hands are mine/It's standing in a circular line," she sings on "Rock Paper Scissors" from "Revelling."

Of the two discs, there are many stand-out tracks, including, on "Reckoning," "School Night," "Grey," and "Old Old Song." These are tracks where she pontificates less about the evils and wrongs of modern society and brings to life the intertwined joy and pain of relationships and families.

On "Revelling," the music is faster, more joyful and less lyrically oriented. "OK" rocks with unusual harmonies and staccato organ riffs. "Ain't That the Way" is a clever, fast, flirty tune where DiFranco admits that love makes her feel like a dork. "Beautiful Night," a mostly acoustic track featuring a mournful trumpet and an organ, floats like the breezes that make such nights so beautiful.

The catch is, there's more than two hours of music here. And this isn't radio-friendly slick pop; this is creative, challenging and thought-provoking music — DiFranco's specialty. Righteous Babe Records put out this unabridged encyclopedia of tunes and because it’s DiFranco's own label, maybe no one suggested trimming it back.

She revisits the same subjects frequently and, although she does it differently each time, you've heard it before, if not here, on one of her previous albums. Even the lifers, they're gonna get tired of that distinct voice. But even if you can have too much of a good thing, it's still a good thing.

 

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Creativity, brilliance grace folk singer’s recent album