CD Reviews

Ani DiFranco | Red Letter Year

Righteous Babe (2008)

By TED DROZDOWSKI | September 23, 2008

4.0 Stars

This is DiFranco’s most sophisticated album, a musical convergence of her best qualities: warm singing, graceful writing, experimentation. Even the title track, which mourns the state of modern American life and the devastation of New Orleans, has a softer bite than most of her earlier discs. DiFranco’s acoustic guitar rings more gently, her singing flows instead of churning out words like machine-gun fire, and the arrangements stack loops with live playing (which includes flourishes from guests like textural trumpet player Jon Hassell and the Crescent City’s Rebirth Brass Band) to create an ear-caressing framework for every track. There’s also a surprising innocence — explicit in the lovestruck lyrics of “Way Tight,” subtle in the worldly “Emancipated Minor” — that keeps DiFranco’s world view generally upbeat, even when she’s crooning lines like “I won’t pray to a male god/’cause that would be insane.”

Related: Ani and angst, Get CLOSEr, Going on sale: September 12, 2008, More

Topics: CD Reviews , Rebirth Brass Band, Ani DiFranco, Ani DiFranco

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