Ani DiFranco, a long time singer and songwriter, recently released her twenty-first album entitled “Educated Guess” on Tuesday.
The new recording is her first solo project in years and is also her first true solo album. DiFranco plays all the instruments used in the recording, does both sets of vocals and produced and mixed the entire recording herself. The album, a little more than 48 mi poems or her poetic lyrics set to music which display her roots as a folk singer.
Lyrically, DiFranco is a true poet. Some of her lyrics continue to have underlying political themes, but on this album songs like “Bubble” and “Swim” tell of a person revisiting past loves and notes of programming, consists of fourteen tracks composed of her spoken word -reflecting on the lessons learned from them. The spoken word-poems are additions that show her classical, improvisational, coffee house style.
The musical style cannot really fit into one genre, but is better described as laid-back jazz rhythms and funk grooves mixed with folk/grassroots styling. For people accustomed to her older style, folk punk, myself included, this change will most likely come as an unwelcome surprise. This new style is better suited to fans th44at listen to Norah Jones for lyrics and Ericka Badu for musical styling.
In my opinion, there is only one track on the CD that is really worth listening to. “Rain Check” is the small glimpse of hope that the artist still has some ties to her earlier albums. Perhaps DiFranco’s best record was the 1998 “Little Plastic Castles.” It showed her poetic style, her musical grace and a lack of interrupting cries and howls. She has even had one of her songs, “Joyful Girl,” covered by the Dave Matthews Band in 2003, which unfortunately sold better for him than her.
While I have a dislike for the new album, Ani DiFranco is one of the few present day singers that I actually respect. She did not want to wait around for a large-scale record company to sign her on when she began her professional gigs as a teenager. After college, she went ahead and formed her own, Righteous Babe Records. Without the money for large advertisements, she sold herself by earning the respect of her following through touring and grassroots politics. She has spent a large amount of time doing live performances and supporting cultural and political organizations. In addition, she publicly speaks out on issues that she deems important.
No, the CD was not great. I probably would not buy it. However, I do recommend it to people who want their music to be more than just the synthesized sounds of modern plastic-figured pop “princesses.