Ani Difranco : Releases >>

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Ani DiFranco's fondness for cheeky self-effacement marks her fourth album, Not a Pretty Girl. Having redefined our whole concept of cult following, the funky, punky singer/songwriter has parlayed her prowess for six-string blues guitar into an alternative acoustic sound all its own. This album marks real growth for the musician. Songs like the title track or "Worthy" are more fully realized than many of her earlier pieces, which lean toward artful scat or spare guitar and vocal arrangements. It also precedes DiFranco's more experimental work, which recurs with increasing frequency on subsequent recordings. --Nick Heil

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Whereas on Little Plastic Castle Ani DiFranco questioned her public image in song, here the fiercely independent singer/songwriter turns away from stardom's beckoning questions to further explore her emotional balance. "Angry Anymore" is a back-porch country song (with banjo and accordion) about coming to terms with a turbulent adolescence. "Everest" floats by as a reverie of spiritual rejuvenation. Most effective is "'Tis of Thee", which deals with racial injustice. The politics are oversimplified, but the melody is one of DiFranco's strongest. She even funks it up on the extended drum-machine-driven jam "Hat Shaped Hat". But while DiFranco enjoys playing around ("Know Now Then" features a "space phone" vocal), she's strongest when most contemplative, as the title track bears out. Backed by organ, piano, and guitar, she espouses this grand truth: "Half of learning how to play / Is learning what not to play." In her quietest moments DiFranco is living proof of simplicity's great power. --Rob O'Connor

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Fellow Workers >>

Following their successful 1996 The Past Didn't Go Anywhere collaboration, anticorporate folksinger Ani DiFranco and vagabond historian-storyteller Utah Phillips gather for another rousing round, though Fellow Workers is a looser, funkier, more acoustic affair than its predecessor. These sessions step lively: the performers burst into seemingly spontaneous applause, cheers, and laughter. Phillips honors civil disobedience, leftist matriarch Mother Jones, and the complex feelings entwined with the promise of a better America. The album's core lies where "The Long Memory"'s soulful organ, bass, and trumpet flow into the powerful "The Silence That Is Me." DiFranco and band provide mellow fingerpicking, shattered beats, hopped-up Wurlitzer, and bass-heavy funk, beautifully complementing Phillips's wry tales and paying homage to the invaluable oral tradition. --Paige La Grone