Amanda Petrusich (September 2006)

Still Fighting

Original folk-punk has plenty left to say

Ani DiFranco has been rallying against American injustice – racism, sexism, violence, exploitation of privilege – for almost two decades now, always tempering her political tirades with confessional, quasi-sacrificial bits. For bored, disillusioned folkies and world conscious punks, DiFranco is a perennial beacon touring incessantly, slamming an acoustic guitar with her press-on nails taped firmly in place (effectively stopping her hands from bleeding), finger-picking through unrecognizable alternate tunings while two big, black combat boots anchor her frame. Cooing and wailing and heaving across the stage, DiFranco consistently challenges her audience, simultaneously re-inventing both the sound of the acoustic strum (her sledgehammer playing is far from serene) and the very mechanics of the protest song: DiFranco’s ability to at once be righteous and self-skewering is so weirdly empowering, so honest and human and flawed, its almost impossible not to be compelled to action by her wit.

Eschewing the corporate machinery she’s long assailed in song, DiFranco continues to release all her records on her own Buffalo, N.Y.- based label, Righteous Babe, giving her an instant and significant cred advantage over many of her peers. Reprieve, DiFranco’s 16th studio album (not counting a handful of live records, EP’s and two collaborations with Ohio-born folksinger/labor advocate Utah Phillips), tackles the basic concerns of any thinking, 21st century American: cancer, death (DiFranco lost her father in 200[4]), religion, competition, Dick Cheney, Enron, the Supreme Court, pollution, Patriarchy, Manhattan, feminism, melting ice caps, war television, fashion and pain.

DiFranco’s political and personal priorities may not have changed much since her self titled 1990 debut, but her sound – from solo vocals-and-guitar scredds to full band throwdowns – transforms often, bending to suit new material (and new problems). A collaboration with partner Todd Sickafoose, Reprieve is intimate and organic, DiFranco’s strums occasionally punctuated by unobtrusive keyboard flutters and tiny synth murmurs, squeezing in wisps of drums, bass, Wurlitzer, pump organ or found sounds (white noise, traffic, trains, thunder, critters). Like 1999’s To The Teeth, or 2004’s Educated Guess, Reprieve is more contemplative than celebratory; after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, DiFranco’s adopted hometown, recording had to be shuffled back to Buffalo, and Reprieve benefits from a distinct sense of disconnect and longing.

The addictive “Subconscious” mixes scrappy guitar and vocals with soft, disembodied synth-yawns, as DiFranco earnestly intones: “Zillions of cell phones / Beaming through my hair / I’m not in the best shape I’ve ever been in / But I know where I’m going / and it ain’t where I been.” The song “78% H2O” begins with what sounds an awful lot like a dragging respirator, followed by doubled, echoing vocals and twisting guitar, DiFranco roaring proud about carcinogens and bodies: “They’re squinting into microscopes / Trying to figure out a way we call live in hell.”

The record’s spare cover was inspired by a picture of a mutilated tree in post-bomb Nagasaki; half the plant is destroyed, while the other half remains intact, stretching up, searching for sun. An eerily apt symbol of the faith-and-horror axis of war (or, maybe, a catastrophically mismanaged natural disaster), this little tree is also a solid mirror of DiFranco’s songwriting credo – break hearts, give hope.

Scott Brodeur (Sept/Oct 2006 issue)

Ani DiFranco’s poetry, politics and distinct vocal delivery deservedly get most of the attention, but her musicianship on Reprieve is equally worthy of notice. Her acoustic guitar playing is mesmerizing, as usual, but her melodic fills on electric guitar and keyboards, along with her percussion work, bring some color to this group of songs.

Her interplay with bassist Todd Sickafoose, the only other musician on the album, is prominent. Sickafoose’s acoustic bass is everywhere. His splashy playing evokes Richard Davis’ memorable jazzy mark on Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. You hear this lovely soundscape right away on the opener “Hypnotized,” one of the best songs from DiFranco’s increasingly rich catalogue.

Lyrically, Reprieve, which she started to cut in New Orleans just before Katrina struck, is filled with the type of sophisticated wordplay that her fans have come to expect. On “In The Margins,” DiFranco sings, “Sometimes I see myself/Through the eyes of a stray dog/From the alley across the street.”

The internal politics shift to a wider worldview as DiFranco locks her lens on targets such as Washington, Hiroshima and New Orleans. On the title track, DiFranco weaves the political with the interpersonal, wondering 60 years later about the dropping of atomic bombs and then bringing it all back home: “To split yourself in two/Is just the most radical thing you can do.”

(August 30th 2006)

London, England

Rescued from her flooded New Orleans base three days after Hurricane Katrina – the “Saint Claude” credited with “traffic + trains + birds + rain + thunder + frogs” is the avenue leading to the drowned Ninth Ward – Reprieve may be the best album of DiFranco’s career and a sterling affirmation of her DIY principles. Set to beautifully organic folk-jazz arrangements recorded with just touring bass/keyboard player Todd Sickafoose, it’s a typically candid survey of personal and public anxieties, from the embittered political cynicism of “Millennium Theater” and media disenchantment of “Decree,” to the more introspective concerns of “Subconscious” and “Half-Assed,” which find her searching for “a moment that is mine.” The true heir to Joni Mitchell’s taste and intelligence.

Darryl Sterdan (August 11, 2006)

DiFranco shines on Reprieve

Winnipeg, Manitoba

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 Theater,” 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.

Jon Pareles (August 7, 2006)

“I know where I’m going, and it ain’t where I’ve been,” Ani DiFranco sings near the beginning of Reprieve, the 18th studio album of a recording career that started in 1990. That’s only partly true. Ms. DiFranco’s songs still juxtapose the intimate and the political; her lyrics still spiral from image to insight. But lately she has moved away from the quick-strummed syncopated guitar and the rush of words that once defined her songwriting, paring down her music to draw a listener closer.

The songs on Reprieve are quiet and relatively sparse, often carried by lightly finger-picked guitar vamps. That doesn’t exactly mean they’re folky. Ms. DiFranco, who as usual is her own producer, is experimenting this time around with ambience. Subtle sounds — acoustic instruments, electronic tones, environmental noises, distorted echoes — well up around her, and they open up pockets of shadow around her usual pinpoint clarity. Now the atmosphere is as important as the words. …

Will Hermes (August 4, 2006)

… This time she slows down, while co-conspirator Todd Sickafoose works jazzy upright bass lines into songs that sound serene until you parse the lyrics. Inspired by Hurricane Katrina’s impact on her part-time home of New Orleans and other outrages, Reprieve’s beautifully committed music — the kind that’s as essential now as it has ever been. Grade: A

Kerri Mason (August 12, 2006)

No paparazzi lens could snap a more revealing picture than the one DiFranco willingly offers with each annual studio album (16 in as many years). With the unforced intimacy that has won her legions of fans, Reprieve tackles the usual DiFranco topics: the ugliness of love, the improprieties of the ruling class, the polarity of womanhood and an ever-shifting view of self. It might sound heady, but she’s got the gift of lyrical precision—nothing cuts to the core quite like the resolution of a DiFranco rhyme. Musically, the album is more languid than earlier efforts without sacrificing the urgency of her patented guitar pluck-strum. And “Half-Assed,” a mature woman’s plea for an evasive moment of truth, is one of her most fully realized songs to date.

Gene Stout (August 8, 2006)

Hurricane Katrina and a case of tendinitis didn’t get in the way of another stunning album from passionate, independent folk-poet Ani DiFranco.

Sidelined for months from touring, DiFranco and her bassist, Todd Sickafoose, had finished much of the recording in New Orleans when the hurricane struck. After DiFranco retrieved her master recordings, she headed back to her hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., to complete the album, overdubbing parts using whatever instruments were available, including a vintage omnichord, a modern “cheesy synthesizer” and even a bicycle tire pump for sound effects.

The result is a gripping collection of songs that are spare and haunting, but as powerful lyrically as anything she has recorded.

DiFranco tackles politics, social issues and complex modern relationships. Most chilling is the title song, which mixes feminism, patriarchy, nuclear weaponry and survival of the planet.

GRADE: A

Jack Chester (August 2006)

Ani DiFranco continues to be the hardest working (honest) woman in show business. The opening track on her latest record builds slowly from an acoustic bass solo into a translucently lucid meandering introspective ballad befitting its title, “Hypnotized.” Initially, Reprieve feels aesthetically softer than much of her previous recording and while Ani gets more personal than political on this release, her residual rage from the most recently stolen presidential election fuels the deliberately chaotic “Decree” and the softly dark “Millennium Theater.” If there is a real difference here from her older material (if such a distinction need be made), it is in the musical depth of the subtle but many layers of instrumentation and found object sounds in these new tunes. As has been true of her recent recordings, very few hands touch the process, but there seems to be a new attention to filling in all the little spaces between the chords and Ani’s considerable conscience. Reprieve is typical of the honesty and poetry that DiFranco’s long-time fans have come to count on, giving new fans a continuously growing mountain of work to mine.