I will admit, Ani DiFranco is an acquired taste. She is one of those artists who is considered by the majority of people to be somewhat strange and exotic, who has been around for a long time, and it takes a good friend to sit you down and finally convince you to try her out. But once you do, you'll never forget the first time you heard her play, and you're liable to become rapidly obsessed with her music.
"Educated Guess," her most recent release, is exemplary of DiFranco's musical talent, creativity and artistic bravery. And it's certainly worthy of obsession. The album, put out by DiFranco's longtime label Righteous Babe Records, showcases her incredibly gifted guitar playing, vocal talent and superior lyrical ability.
"Educated Guess" also represents DiFranco's most truly solo effort in that she not only plays all of the instruments and provides all of the vocals (both lead and backing) featured on the album, but she also did all of the recording and mixing herself.
The end result is an album that is at once both simple and complex. It is at points delightfully sparse and focused, and at others beautifully intricate and complicated. The listener can tell how very hard DiFranco works and how much of herself she puts into her art and how passionate she is about what she does (one would have to be to put out over 20 albums in 14 years like DiFranco has).
DiFranco's music has always been unabashedly intimate and political, and "Educated Guess" is certainly no exception.
In the poetic and enchanting track "Animal," the multifaceted musician sings of her misgivings about the current federal administration and the fate of the country with the intensity and feeling many lesser artists would reserve only for love songs. Whether or not you agree with her beliefs, she illustrates them beautifully with a simple and forlorn guitar pattern and lyrics like: "And aggression begets aggression/ It's a very simple lesson/ That long preceded any king of Heaven/ And there's this brutal imperial power/ That my passport says I represent/ But it will never represent where my heart lives/ Only vaguely where it went/ Cuz I know when you grow up surrounded/ By willful ignorance/ You learn that mercy has its own country/ And that it's round and borderless."
Even for diehard fans (including yours truly), however, "Educated Guess" is, at points, a bit rough around the edges. Some songs are better than others. For instance, I envision myself occasionally skipping over "Bliss Like This" and "Bubble" in the future. In addition, the album's composition seems a bit off at points, with brash songs occasionally appearing when a gentler tone would be more appropriate and vice versa. The harsh "Bubble" in particular was a poor choice for the album's finale.
There are also a handful of spoken word tracks that are...interesting, for lack of a better word. While beautifully scripted and well delivered, one wonders why DiFranco didn't just put them to music like the rest of the album. With a musical talent like hers, it's almost like cheating for her not to use it. Minus the spoken-word numbers, however, it is generally DiFranco's simplest tracks that are the most enthralling. The title track, "Animal," and "Rain Check" are some of the gems.
Overall, "Educated Guess" reaffirms Ani DiFranco's extraordinary talent, and, moreover, her importance as one of music's foremost talents. I hesitate to say that she is one of the best female talents around, because that term demeans the extent of her gift and her appeal as being one that is the province of only one gender, when really, she is good no matter what bathroom you use. And as DiFranco herself astutely comments in the spoken-word track "Grand Canyon": "Why can't all decent men and women/ Call themselves feminists?/ Out of respect/ For those who fought for this."
To relegate her work to the realm of "whiny feminazi crap," as one of my male friends put it, is to ignore the work of one of the best American musicians of our time.
I also hesitate to praise Ani DiFranco as simply a musician, because she is so much more than that. She is an artist, an advocate, a poet, a woman, an American. In all these capacities, she is unafraid, blunt and strong. She takes risks with her work, both the lyrics and the music itself. Sometimes those risks result in confusion, but more often they produce a greater truth and beauty than more timid singer-songwriters ever could. So pick up a copy of "Educated Guess," because
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