On a certain rather well-known music and book selling website
\nwhich shall remain nameless, the hordes of consumers are “allowed”
\nto post their very own reviews. Usually these “reviews” are
\nrubbish, one or two line rants about how a band doesn’t sound like
\nthey did in the good old days, or what not. Checking out what the
\ngeneral public had to say about Ani DiFranco’s new disc, I naively
\nhoped for something more intelligent, since because DiFranco’s
\nmusic doesn’t get stuffed down the proverbial eardrums of said
\ngeneral public, it takes at least a modicum of intelligence to know
\nthat her music is worth buying in the first place.<\/p>\n
Instead, staring me back in the face was an endless stream of
\nsighs about how rap has no business being on her record, and what
\nhappened to the good old “woman and her acoustic guitar.” Come on
\npeople, what gives? The rap takes up about one seventy-fifth of the
\nalbum, and if I may quote the venerable Joni Mitchell, when she was
\nonce asked what she thought about people who wanted her to make
\nanother
\nBlue<\/i>, she replied “I think those people want, and want, and
\nwant\u2026”<\/p>\n
So with only slight trepidation, I remained loyal to my friend
\nAni and bought her disc. I am on my fourth time through this disc
\nin the five days since I bought it, and it’s still a novelty. The
\npremier acoustic rock songwriter of this decade nearly past – and I
\nmean the premier songwriter, not just one of them – continues to
\nchallenge the boundaries of modern music, boldly going where no
\nrock and roll minstrel – male, female, straight or gay, white or
\nblack – has gone before. She coaxes some of the wildest sounds out
\nof her guitar ever (check out the swirling ’70s vibe on “Wish I
\nMay,” can you dig it?), and merges what is normally called “funk”
\nwith what is normally called “folk” to the point of it sounding
\nnatural.<\/p>\n
\nTo The Teeth<\/i> is not a jazz or a funk album, like what you
\nmay have read from someone who likes to pigeonhole music into such
\nnarrow categories. But it is, most definitely, an Ani DiFranco
\nalbum, a natural progression from the more loose, experimental
\nsounds of her last two discs. After telling us last year that she
\nwasn’t angry anymore, she is having more fun than ever, but is
\nstill the insightful writer she’s always been.<\/p>\n
Take the hypnotic “Arrivals Gate,” a cute confession of someone
\nwho likes to go to the airport to see families embracing; “watching
\nchildren run with their arms outstretched.” Or the beautiful,
\nbrassy “Going Once,” a carefree story of a girl running away from
\nher past – “She was packed, she had a suitcase \/ full of bungles
\nand near misses.” Or “Back Back Back” in which she compares a young
\nman’s bitterness to that of “old old people \/ scowling away at
\nnothing.” It is her ability to find beauty and sadness in moments
\nthat most of us just shrug off, or hardly even notice, that makes
\nDiFranco such a reward to listen to.<\/p>\n
In fact, after all the fun, one almost forgets what a
\ncaptivating song the disc-opening title track is, an anti-weapon
\nrant that could be butchered in lesser hands, but not in hers. “We
\nare all working together now \/ to make our lives mercifully brief,”
\nshe sings, and eventually suggests that we “Open fire on MTV \/ open
\nfire on NBC \/ and CBS and NBC.” How did FOX and UPN get off scot
\nfree? Perhaps she’s a closet
\nAlly McBeal<\/i> fan. Or perhaps not, but in any case, this is
\nprobably the most direct, politically charged song she’s ever done.
\nAnd the conclusion is fantastic – “If I hear one more time about a
\nfool’s right to his tools of rage \/ I’m gonna take all my friends
\nand move to Canada \/ and we’re gonna die of old age.” And as a
\nportent of the album to come, the coda calls in the horns to blow
\nthe anger away, in an arrangement slightly reminiscent of\u2026
\nwell, of Joni Mitchell, around the time she was breaking free of
\nthe confessional love song shackles that had brought her
\npopularity.<\/p>\n
Okay, it is a bit of an oversimplification to compare the two so
\nshamelessly, but one can’t help but notice if not the musical
\nstyle, at least the attitude of the jazzy Mitchell peeping through
\non this album from time to time. Informal, loose jams like “Swing”
\nand “Freakshow,” spooky ballads like “Providence” (featuring the
\nArtist who I’m still going to call Prince) and “Cloud Blood,” and
\nintelligent soul like “Going Once” and “Back Back Back.” The only
\nletdowns are the few times she gets repetitious – “Carry You
\nAround” just doesn’t go very far in any direction, and “Freakshow”
\nhas a section where she repeats the line “You need a lot of and
\ncompliance” to the point of extreme annoyance. The fact that Alanis
\nMorrisette’s voice seems to have taken her hostage whenever the
\nword “compliance” is sung doesn’t help. But at least there aren’t
\nany 15 minute journeys into oblivion like certain DiFranco songs of
\nthe past, which shall remain nameless.<\/p>\n
This is DiFranco’s second album of 1999, and her tenth full
\nlength studio album of the ’90s. And she kept her fans from being
\nrestless in the one year this decade (1997) that didn’t see a
\nrelease of a new DiFranco studio disc by releasing a double disc
\nlive set. And yet her concerts are still chock full of unfamiliar
\ntunes. How many other musical artists are this prolific? In her
\ncase, the quality more than measures up to the quantity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":25201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6212],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-36406","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-ani-difranco","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/36406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36406"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=36406"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=36406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}