I randomly thought "I wonder what she's up to today." Turns out she released an album this year, and I'm too lazy to do a full album review. So anyway, here's goes:
Revolutionary Love, by Ani DiFranco. Clocking in at 56:33 on (what else) Righteous Babe Records. By my count, this is DiFranco's 30th release since the 1990s Ani DiFranco, and as one might expect her sound has changed substantially over those 30 records and 3 decades. And Revolutionary Love bears little resemblance to those early, sparse albums of 6 strings and her vocal chords.
Revolutionary Love is a solid album, showing an artist at the top of her game, writing songs and composing arrangements that deomstrate a lifetime of experience, and that isn't afraid to use the hard-earned wisdom DiFranco has picked up over the years. The title track is a 7 minute soul-infused jam that let's go of much of her early poetics and focuses on the groove. The lyrics could come off as uninspired at first, but DiFranco has the confidence of a writer that knows she can outwrite most of her contemporaries and chooses instead to focus on the groove and let it do the talking.
Throughout the album, songs will borrow from soul, jazz, and (at times) bossa nova in a way that doesn't feel forced, and isn't overly worried about how pure or not that sound works. As an example, the amount of flute on the album, and when it comes in and goes out, sounds like early Van Morrison and Curtis Mayfield.
The album isn't all without politics. Tracks like Do or Die make no bones about her worldview and stance clear.
Do you wake up in a cold sweat?
Well, that's sane
Least you got a little brain left
You've got a little brain
'Cause there's foxes in the hen house
And bad news every day
And right there on Pennsylvania Avenue
The sheetless KKK
And there's models wielding microphones
Chasing maniacs around
And everything's on fire
And there's twisters touching down
A lot of this album could be considered adult contemporary. It's got the smoothness that comes with the aging process of many artists - a good thing; the 40-somethings attempting to capture their youthful rage is never a winning formula - but DiFranco's compositions feel less like a fading star and sound more like a woman that's become comfortable both in her skin, and with the ways of the world.
While the mid-2000s saw experimentation that felt like a new direction for the sake of it, Revolutionary Love feels like the album you put together when your principles and your curiosity comes together, and this is absolutely one to check out. Though 30 years on, it might be what you put on in the background of a dinner party, rather than your art project.
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