As the singer/songwriter/feminist/activist gears up to release her memoir, No Walls and the Recurring Dream, on May 7, she announces her summer tour dates.
There are almost no refrains or singable lines. Dissonant chords, whispers, high squeaks, and line after line about love and disillusionment and The Man.
She uses horns, dips her toes in funky waters, and figures out piano chords to noodle in avant garde jazz. This is not the reason to listen to Ani DiFranco.
The Ani who learned to sneer and growl has finally joined fists with the much calmer, experimental jazz and funk self she’s presented over the past few albums.
This isn’t the kind of collection that will make your brain bulge at every chord change. It has its dirges, digressions and self-indulgent moments and minutes.
He was Woody Guthrie, and ‘Til We Outnumber ‘Em is an exploration of a radical man whose style planted the roots for governmentally-reactive music like punk.
Little Plastic Castle dips deep inside the bell-shaped goldfish bowl, sailing powdery-voiced tumults through introspection and over rivers of guitar-speak.