ani on REVELLING/RECKONING

Q: DO YOU THINK OF REVELLING/RECKONING AS TWO SEPARATE ENTITIES, OR A DOUBLE ALBUM?

Ani: It's not really a "double album," because it's not one thing that was too long for a [single] disk, but it's not two separate things, of course. The albums are really distinct in their nature, and the process of my "new release" becoming two records [went like this:] At first I thought I was just making a [single] record, and there were certain songs that I couldn't reconcile with other songs, there was just material that was so disparate; I had this idea that I wanted to make an album that flowed, and I couldn't [accomplish that with a single disc].

My songs come from all the different experiences and emotions in my life, you know; it's not all party music and it's not all quiet, introspective songs, so my albums have always been journeys of sonic peaks and valleys, and emotional peaks and valleys, and opposites butted up against each other, but I started to wonder if I was even gonna be able to do that with some of these songs. The minute I decided I was gonna make two records, then of course the process protracts [laughs], because you go from one hour to two hours, and so I kept recording and kept writing and working through ideas, and the first record, when I originally conceived of it, the Revelling record, I thought it was gonna be more revelling, you could dance all the way through it, but it just didn't turn out to be that kind of year. So the first record, Revelling, it's a real wide span of musical contexts that I exist in. There's everything from solo guitar and voice to instrumental pieces of music that I constructed by myself playing all the instruments, and then there's band recordings, live in studio, the vibe of the band playing together, realizing certain songs, and then there's me the spoken-word Little Poet Girl, with musical weather that exists around and within the landscape of the poem. So there's all [kinds of] different focuses; some of the tracks on Revelling are just about how much I love to play the guitar, and some of them are about ideas, and some of them are about grooves. I think the most true sense that "revelling" has really issued forth from this first record, for me, is just revelling in the act of playing music; there's a lot of that on the first record.

The Reckoning record is much more song-oriented, much more idea-oriented, and it's much slower and much quieter. [laughs] It's kinda slow and quiet all the way through, which is kind of a new thing for me. There's a lot more "reckoning" : with myself, with my society. It's much more idea-oriented from beginning to end. But there's also solo guitar interludes between songs, and bridges between songs that I've never done before, so there is purely the act of making music on that record, also.

[...] Even though the albums are really distinct pieces of work and they have much different flavors, much different characters, it is a double album in the sense that the journey really is from track one, disc one to track sixteen, disc two. And by the time you get to the end of the first disc, you're already set up for the fall [laughs] of the second disc.

Q: IN MANY OF YOUR EARLIER SONGS, YOU WROTE ABOUT BRIEF ENCOUNTERS WITH FOLKS YOU'D MET ON THE ROAD; THE RELATIONSHIPS ON THIS ALBUM SEEM A BIT DEEPER...

Ani: Life is different now; I've made commitments, I certainly have responsibilities that I never had before in my life, and really being good for that, being up for it, is kickin' my ass. [...] On these records I have noticed myself looking back to growing up in the 80s, where my consciousness comes from, what I've known my society to be since I became a conscious adult, and what that means in terms of where I am now and where the society is now.

[...] In the distant past of my songwriting, there was a certain amount of gallantness to my persona and my songs, and I don't think it was because I was trying to be gallant, but because I was trying to propose solutions to myself: okay here's the pathetic little person that exists in the world and here's the person that she can imagine herself being. And always trying to inspire myself to that place through my music, through my art; I mean, why do we make art but to teach ourselves things, to bring ourselves somewhere that we can't go through math [laughs] or whatever. I think now, though, that my persona in these new songs is not so gallant, not very strong necessarily, and not so sure of themselves, not so sure that she's gonna figure it out, even - whatever "it" is. That's a tougher place to write from, that's a deeper level of ... truth to be shown in one's experience, I guess, for me. [...] So there's a lot of reckoning just with the process of my work this year.

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