Now Playing: 'If Yr Not' from ¿Which Side Are You On? by Ani DiFranco

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While some listeners may be surprised at the changes Ani DiFranco has made to her style and forms for her new album, ¿Which Side Are You On? (her seventeenth album in twenty-two years), it's easy to forget some of the events which have affected the singer over the last few years may have rendered those changes necessary – and they aren't the ones you'd immediately think of. Yes, DiFranco became a mother in 2007 and, true, many aspects of her sound changed after Hurricane Katrina forced her to abandon both the initial sessions for Reprieve as well as the New Orleans studio where she had been working on it – but the most significant reason why something had to change for Ani DiFranco was because of the “severe tendonitis” diagnosis she received in 2005. For a guitarist who made her name as a finger-picking player, such a diagnosis qualified as career threatening and, conspicuously, it has been the thing which has kept her trying to adapt ever since. All of the aural alterations which Ani has made in the last five years are attributable to it.

Not all of the concessions to fate and adaptations DiFranco has made to it have been the easiest things to hear but, on ¿Which Side Are You On?, the singer has arrived at her best, most solid and sustainable solution to date. This time – rather than simply trying to substitute similar sounds in for the busy and bracing acoustic guitar figures she's no longer able to produce as she had on Reprieve, or simply trying to bury her old muses in new ones as she had on Red Letter Year – DiFranco has chosen to start layering some new and vibrant sounds alongside the conventions longtime fans know and let them feed, brace, bolster and inform each other. The results are a fantastic new creature that is all fans who found the last couple of albums lacking could have asked for and brings the possibility of exciting new forms into focus as well; it is truly remarkable.

Even with such a glowing advance warning, fans will still be couple perfect unaware as “Life Boat” warms the circuits for the album. With warm and fade-y electric guitars, a bowed bass and a Wurlitzer piano Ani begins to recount candidly the ways and means by which she grew up as well as how she's related her stories before from the standpoint of a dry-eyed survivor (check out lines like, “I remember that old hotel had quite a smell/ Where I would go to use the phone/ between the doughnut shop and the pizza parlor/ where I learned to live alone” and “every time I open my mouth/ I take off my clothes” and “and I got this running monologue/ entertaining in its outrage”) hardened by the experience, unrepentant and strong. It is a beautiful act of rebellion and the perfect one for Ani DiFranco to use to re-introduce herself (again) to her fans; she appears here, galvanized, brilliant and ready to go. These proud images continue into “Unworry” and strike brightly as the song breaks during its chorus with thunderous timpanis and mellotron before the singer strives to re-write (or at least put her own stamp on) history with an updated cover of Florence Reece's “Which Side Are You On?” complete with a punkish swagger as well as a new thematic axe to grind. While both of the songs which precede it are strong, somehow that cover is the point at which things seem to look suddenly very different around the ¿Which Side Are You On? landscape. Right there, the growth that the album expresses is made explicit; there are nods to the past and sounds which echo different periods of DiFranco's musical history (in some cases reaching as far back as her 1990 debut – but with specific compositional nods to Out Of Range and Little Plastic Castle), but they're combined with some very new and wildly compelling ideas. Among the departures from Ani's own brand of orthodoxy are the fantastic military drums which drive and add drama to the title track and offer the perfectly infectious foil to the song's soulful and pleading vocal, the watery/dreamy, upbeat and ethereal guitar figure and massive, panoramic atmospherics of “Splinter” and the 'straight-outta-NOLA' stomp of “If Yr Not” which each take as hard a left turn as the words themselves imply but never actually see DiFranco losing an ounce of her own inimitable voice or sensibility along the way; here, DiFranco manages to bend each of these sounds to her will and illustrate what she can do with them – not what they can do with her if she gives herself to them.

Needless to say, ¿Which Side Are You On? is a startlingly powerful statement for Ani DiFranco, but it's made all the more startling when listeners realize that much of it was made without the benefit of the singer's own signature guitar style and tone. While guitars still factor heavily into the album, they are not the driving force behind it; in fact they are one of the smallest imaginable presences. Therein is the breakthrough that ¿Which Side Are You On? represents: here, Ani DiFranco illustrates that the source of the power behind her music is her and her sensibility, not her instrument.

Artist:
www.righteousbabe.com/ani/
www.myspace.com/anidifranco
www.facebook.com/anidifranco
www.twitter.com/anidifranco

Further Reading:
Ground Control – Ani DiFranco – [Discography Review] (Part One)  
Ground Control – Ani DiFranco – [Discography Review] (Part Two)

Album:
¿Which Side Are You On? is out now. Buy it here on Amazon .