Ani DiFranco ★★★★
★★★★
Unprecedented Sh!t
RIGHTEOUS BABE. CD/DL/LP
Prolific alt-folk activist delivers 23rd studio album.
Since launching her own label, DiFranco has roared or crooned uncompromising truths, a distaff Woody Guthrie mixing in everything from funk to hip-hop. In this filmic offering, all commentators observe our crumbling landscape. Spinning Room is a jazzy analysis of troubled exhaustion where you still need a pill to sleep; the protagonist of Virus endures the pandemic while a violin strafes with Kurt Weill anxiety. On the dark, drum-lead chant Baby Roe, DiFranco sounds like Billie Holiday as she upbraids the overturners of Roe v Wade (“We’re so wigged out/Yeah, we’re so devout”), before pleading for “the path of least suffering”. The title track features a grim bellow against shredded feedback – a Mad Max world – and New Bible is a droll Deep South dream about an off-grid life. The central message is optimistic, though: we’re still not doomed – if we each do something.