Ani DiFranco

Like Prince, another highly motivated renegade, Ani DiFranco demands much of herself
and her fans. Uncompromising and emotionally charged, Revelling/Reckoning is a dizzying
double-disc, twenty-nine-track ziggurat. The first disc, Revelling, is more outward-focused
and band-oriented, judiciously incorporating funk and jazz elements. Reckoning is more
introspective and spare, featuring DiFranco's prickly finger-picking. Cool, lilting... More >

"The songs/they come out more slowly/Now that I am the bad guy," she allows in the best song-not-track here. But maybe admitting that you require more patience than the average lover has in him or her is a way of evading harder truths--namely, that songs also come out more slowly when you're selling as opposed to defining yourself, as she did for so long with such charm, chutzpah, wit, grit, and politics. This is a double album where the best songwriting never meshes with the best horn writing, which is what gets her juices going these days. That is, it's a double album marking a year she should have taken off. Intelligence you can count on. Integrity you can foster. But inspiration requires more patience than the average genius has in her, and let us not forget the average label owner. (Grade: B-)