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Ani DiFranco
Reprieve
(Righteous Babe/Outside)
Think of it as the calm after the storm. Ani DiFranco's 15th solo studio set Reprieve was begun in New Orleans last year but finished in Buffalo in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So perhaps it's understandable that the alt-folk singer-songwriter seems to be in a sombre, more reflective musical mood.
Instead of the choppy, percussive acoustic guitar sound that is her signature, DiFranco takes a more nuanced approach on these 13 cuts. Supported by multi-instrumentalist Todd Sickafoose but doing most of the heavy lifting herself, she fashions soothing neo-folk from a shadowy palette of gentle fingerpicking, ringing melodies, jazzy standup basses, twangy noirish guitar licks, atmospheric keyboards, light percussion, dusty textures and real-world sounds from traffic and trains to birds and rain.
DiFranco's quieter stance doesn't extend to her lyrics, however. As she has for years, Ani continues to seamlessly make the personal political and vice versa, rhapsodising about love one minute on confessions like Hypnotize and Nicotine, blasting the usual right-wing targets ("Halliburton, Enron, chief justices for sale") the next on the anxiously crackling Decree and Millennium Theatre, her latest in a long line of rabble-rousers.
"The resistance is just waiting to be organized," she predicts.
Guess that could make this the calm before the storm too.
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Track Listing:
1. Hypnotized 4:11
2. Subconscious 3:32
3. In the Margins 3:13
4. Nicotine 4:06
5. Decree 3:43
6. 78% H2O 3:30
7. Millennium Theatre 3:14
8. Half-Assed 3:30
9. Reprive 2:45
10. A Spade 4:24
11. Unrequited 4:06
12. Shroud 4:48
13. Reprise 1:34