Ani Difranco - Knuckle Down
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Free Music Notes for Knuckle Down
Free Music Review: good cd
Hit: 4 Stars
i am very happy with thia cd she is one of my favorite artistsFree Music Review: A New Producer Helps Ani Find Middle Ground
Hit: 3 Stars
It's not that Ani DiFranco hasn't been produced by anyone else. It's more that she and her cadre of sympathetic ears have been at the helm of her unique folk-rock sound for the better part of a decade - outside producers are a distant memory. Yet, after two distinctly different and somtimes dissatisfying self-produced efforts, Knuckle Down introduces outside element Joe Henry to man the knobs (known to most for penning the chop-sueyed guitar on Madonna's "Don't Tell Me").
The question is immediate: how would a relative stranger - an artist in his own right - interpret Ani's sound? Would she still be Ani? Could he find the middle ground between jazzy extravagance and tuneless-clutter of her past two discs (respectively)?
Opener and title track "Knuckle Down" is a clear answer, bringing a familiarly frantic guitar attack and a wild meandering acoustic bass line to bear on a lengthy set of quickly unraveling lyrics; a retread of much Educated Guess but with more concise production.
This type of song, though enticingly familiar through it's six-string pyrotechnics, has been DiFranco's weakest as of late - lacking the clear chorus or hook of former favorites. Here it hardly matters - Ani and Henry have sharpened the arrangement of this (and every other) song to a keen edge. There is bass when needed to underscore or drive, strings when needed for tonality or mood, but above all of the added elements there is Ani, with her guitar and her words, at the forefront of each tune.
Nowhere is this more obvious than on "Studying Stones," carried by growling bass notes and quick harmonics accented by drunken-sounding stream of strings painting colors in the background, all of which give way to a childlike see-sawing chorus dabbed with single key words of harmony. It is unlike anything else Ani has recorded, and is simply spectacular.
It is not alone in its success. "Sunday Morning" is a beautiful paean to taking Sundays in bed for granted, the quietly tangled mess of acoustic, bass, and electric guitars supporting Ani's most crystalline regrets of a relationship since the seething of Dilate.
The guitar on "Manhole" quotes the rag piano of a decade-old "Back Around," enlivening a set of confusing lyrics that write off past (and present) lovers by way of slipping off wedding rings and stealing tasteless kisses. The chorus nails a wailing crescendo, following it up with a charmingly whistled bridge via Righteous Babe artist Andrew Bird.
As sure as there are successes, Henry's confident production leads a few songs slightly astray. "Modulation" is inscrutable, with discordant riffs and seemingly strung together lyrics; Ani suddenly blurts out, "Neither of us were wearing helmets, and our blood was everywhere!" just so she can arrive at the eventual refrain "You were better than any drug." "Seeing Eye Dog" has too many metaphors that don't gel with its bluesy stomp and uptempo fingerpicked chorus. "Minerva" is pretty, but never decides what it's trying to achieve after nearly five minutes of meandering. Prosaic "Parameters" lingers a bit too long, making the well-arranged "Callous" seem a little soporific.
Still, what clearly distinguishes this album are the strangely perfect moments amongst the occasional misfires - unfamiliar and exciting moments like "Lag Time," where reminders of the past find success in their departures from a former formula. The guitar of "Lag Time" is gorgeous - a roiling jazzy effort that (thankfully) isn't obscured by a band's worth of excess arrangement. It supports a set of increasingly abstract lyrics, starting off with the three-second rule and ending with a crawling through the desert as a potato bug.
By contrast, "Paradigm" is a frank childhood confession over a mid-tempo gallop of relentless electric eighth-notes. Even though it's electrified like her mid-career efforts, the song harkens back to the acoustic simplicity of songs of Ani's debut, when there was no question that the words she spoke represented her real life, with no vagueness or exaggeration to be found.
What is perhaps the most memorable song on the disc is its last: "Recoil" recalls messy drum-loop love affairs from Ani's late-90s efforts, but it evokes them more due of the weary strength of her voice paired with a standard four-bar chord progression. In a performance perhaps made fiercer by her father's recent passing (the song, written prior to his death, lyrically checks him in the second verse), she confesses to the distance she feels surrounding her even though she remains as close and as tangible as ever. "I come home," she laments, "and my guitar has nothing to say to me." The song decelerates to a simple strum on "Nothing much's going on" as its bridge before launching back into the fiddled under-guitar loops that otherwise propel it.
"Recoil" is a song about isolation, but it's one of the most terrifically engaging tunes Ani has penned in years. Through Henry's sharpening of aural focus Ani's stories have become even more central - the arrangements exist seemingly just to serve them. Just as some fans of her originally bare bisexual folk balked at the production of often-hetero love songs of the late 90s, fans initiated through years of listener-friendly discs filled with undeniably catchy songs could find this newest fare unpalatable: Ani is far from returning to penning more of the sing-along classics of her youth. It's great news for artistic growth, and even in its failures it makes for a thrillingly different disc, but it may be a let down to some longtime listeners.
Free Music Review: One Step Back after fall
Hit: 3 Stars
No one can deny her immense presence the folk and alternative culture. Albums like Little Plastic Castle and Dilate remain modern-day masterpieces of inter-woven genres with strong political commentary, generally addressing the state of the US and focusing on feminism, abortion and civil rights.
With a myriad of albums under her belt (she only was album-absent in 2000 since 1990, only to release a double-disc the next year), DiFranco comes back for the seventeenth time with Knuckle Down.
Backing the glory of winning her first Grammy last year, DiFranco delivers a set of tracks that have a prettier twist than her former efforts. DiFranco's rawness and fierceness has dwindled down with every album from straight-up angry anthems like "Fire Door" to, more recently sad sulkers like "I Know This Bar." Knuckle Down doesn't go very far away from its weak predecessor Educated Guess.
Her recent albums have fallen pray to commonplace melodies and new wailing vocals that DiFranco recently picked up and should drop (see: "Knuckle Down"). But there are other songs that have a promise, like dejected "Studying Stones" and the freshest track on the album "Sunday Morning."
This album marks the first time DiFranco teams up with a co-producer, Joe Henry. However, it seems that DiFranco, being as adamant as she is, did not grant any power for development for the reason that tracks like "Seeing Eye Dog" and "Modulation" sound like regurgitations from another monotonous release titled Evolve.
Then, in continuation of that mundane string of albums, there are songs like "Minerva," which DiFranco would not even consider as a B-side in the early part of her career. Plus, the spoken word "Parameters" is an ode to self-evolution.
Unlike Educated Guess, this album does have its moments. Other than "Sunday Morning," "Manhole" is a carefully entwined piece of folk rock fusion.
Somewhere in-between Reveling / Reckoning and So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter DiFranco lost some of the magic and primitiveness and strayed into routine and run-on songs. Knuckle Down is a slightly tweaked Educated Guess.
Lately, the most interesting aspect of DiFranco's albums has been the packaging, which is the reason why she won the Grammy.
Free Music Review: Not my favorite, but still a fan!
Hit: 3 Stars
I'm surprised I feel so differently about this album than most of the other reviewers! I guess what I really love about Ani is her ability to take a simple melody, add a bunch of different instrumentals, creative lyrics, her emotional voice, some really unique chords and key changes and turn it into something complex, but not grating. I felt like only 2 songs on this album did that: Studying Stones and Paradigm. The rest of the tracks, I just didn't enjoy listening to because I didn't like the melodies. I don't have all of her albums (I have 8, I think) but this is the first one where I don't absolutely love at least 2/3 of the songs. But I'm still glad I bought it and supported her label and her music!Free Music Review: Good Lyrics, Abysmal 'Singing'.
Hit: 2 Stars
I just saw Ani DiFranco live the other night, but I went for her opening act, Erin McKeown. The two have the obvious parallel of skilled guitar playing and a folkish sound (though DiFranco's on the deep end of it.) The problem is that, like McKeown, DiFranco can serve up some good lyrics...but unlike the skilled McKeown, Ani Difranco simply cannot sing. The whole time at the show - and on this disc - she just talks very fast in a sing-song voice over skilled guitar playing, but that's not deserving of attention at all. Lots of personality, but that can't compensate for her "singing". She'd make a good background guitarist providing backing vocals maybe, but she can't fill up the center of a stage.