CD REVIEW: ANI DIFRANCO - KNUCKLE DOWN 9/10
Ani DiFranco is an artist in a league all her own. The only artist that comes to mind that’s anything like DiFranco is Tom Waits. The two artists are similar in more than a few ways: both set out to create music that is definitively their own, both produce their own albums, and both have a place in music where they are either loved or hated with very little middle ground. Whereas Tom Waits will most likely never reach out to new listeners and continue to get stranger by the year, DiFranco, with her new album Knuckle Down, seems to want to invite those who may have avoided her in the past to sit down and have a listen.
To achieve this, DiFranco, for the first time in her 14 album career (in almost as many years), has invited a co-producer to join her. The man who got the job was DiFranco’s friend Joe Henry, who has nine critically acclaimed albums under his belt. He recently produced the Solomon Burke album Don’t Give Up On Me, which itself is a force of nature. A co-producer isn’t the only change that DiFranco has made for Knuckle Down. She also has backing musicians return to the album, which is different than on her last album, Educated Guess, in which she performed everything herself. DiFranco also recorded in Los Angeles instead of at her home studio, wrote all the songs for this album before recording (instead of her usual routine of finding the album in songs she already had), and replaced the horns that had been on her previous albums in favor of strings.
The changes work extremely well. Knuckle Down is the first DiFranco album that invites people who usually have disdain for her sometimes self-indulgent music to see that she is indeed a master songstress. Knuckle Down takes DiFranco’s strengths and amplifies them while taking the parts of her music that didn’t work as well down a notch. It creates a very streamlined album that rarely disappoints and works the way all new CDs should: as a work of audio-art.
Henry’s contributions are evident from the album’s beginning as well. Well-placed strings on the song “Studying Stones” help to enhance the atmosphere and lyrics like: “’course numb is an old hat/old as my oldest memories.” He has also taken DiFranco’s self-indulgence to a minimal level (the spoken word “Parameters,” while haunting, is the album’s weakest point). What remains are songs that accentuate DiFranco’s obvious strengths: her amazing voice (able to go from soothing to snarling in the blink of an eye), her always pertinent lyrics on a woman coming to terms with the world around her, and her ability to make her finger-picking guitar style sound like its own percussion section.
Will Knuckle Down alienate die-hard Ani fans? Not likely. The album, while more produced than previous albums, is still full of plenty of anger, joy and all the other things that her fans come to expect with her music. Made after the death of her father and the dissolving of her marriage, DiFranco has a lot to get off her chest (sample lyric from “Manhole”: “maybe it was I who betrayed his majesty/no opposite reality/like a puddle with no reflection/of the sky or the trees/but after my dreaded beheading/I tied that sucker on with a string”) and she lets the listener know it too.
The Buffalo native is doing a lot for her city right now (with renovating a church on Delaware as the new home of her self-made label Righteous Babe Records), and Buffalonians will do themselves a favor by checking out Knuckle Down. Even in the liner notes are artist’s renderings of places you’ll recognize from around town. But, speaking of town, when will Buffalo have the next chance to see her native daughter in concert? Not until early May. Luckily, Knuckle Down is a perfect album to hold fans over until then.
