consume

Randomly, let’s rank all of the songs on the Ani DiFranco album after three days of listening! “Heartbreak Even” is definitely the best song in the set, but “So What” and “Marrow” are vying for the next best slot. Funkalicious “Ain’t That The Way” and “o.k.” are quite good, but i think they’re slightly topped by the guitar-based “grey” and “Imagine That.” “Garden of Simple” and “Subdivision” occupy a more middling acoustic rank on the charts, though “Your Next Bold Move” is surprisingly great. “Reckoning” is slow and thoughtful but i don’t mind, because the album needed that exact emotion once and it fits perfectly. “Tamburitza Lingua,” “What How When Where (why who)” and “Fierce Flawless” are all songs that are good and bad at once, with parts i’m obsessed with and parts i find rather boring. Past that i could take or leave the rest of the album, instrumentals and all. Obviously i’m still only three-quarters of the way through appreciating Reckoning, but i honestly can tell you i’ll never truly love “School Night” or “Old Old Song” since they’ve got two bad verses for every good one, and “Rock Paper Scissors” and “Sick of Me” are both a little too off kilter to catch my attention. So, there’s some unwarranted opinion that’s bound to change sometime soon; “Heartbreak Even” cannot possibly stand up to another week of continuous repeat, can it?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3204233/

Just when you think Ani DiFranco is just a folk-singer who knows how to funk things up, you listen to the first half of the first half of her new set of discs and are informed “No, really she’s a kung-fu fighter of sound, so you better watch your ass.” She’s so over the extraneous arrangements, cornball lyrics, inability to play a decent solo song in the middle of an album, and nonsense musical experiments. It’s as though Dilate was that violent hint of adolescence showing through the simplicity of youth, and Living In Clip was the treasured family photo album of all the framed little moments up until then, and the next three were all of those awkward teenaged years of trying to learn the way you want to live, with a misstep for every beautiful moment. But now she’s arrived at where she was headed all this time. Everything i’ve heard so far out of Reckoning fits exactly into her sonic puzzle, and while it isn’t what i initially bought into, it’s something i can’t help but like.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3164836/