Sunday Album Review ~ Ani DiFranco: Reprieve
(In an attempt to get a gig as an album reviewer for some other online or print journals, I have decided to start a weekly album review column.)
Dedicated readers of The Late Greats know my love of Ani. Every since I saw her live in 1995, I have been a fan, buying each new release on the day it comes out. And Reprieve was no exception.
About the picture and release date: It was August 6th and then the 9th that America nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Releases always fall on Tuesday, hence it came out on the 8th, between these two dates.) The album cover is said to be a rendering of a picture taken on August 10th, 1945. Shortly after Nagasaki was hit with Fat Man. The original picture taken by Yosuke Yamahata is below.
The album as a whole fits this theme of survival, fits the theme of a breath of fresh air between catastrophes, whether 9/11 and Katrina or two H-bombs. Reprieve can also mean temporary relief from a pending execution. Ani fights for the end of the death penalty. As many of her songs hold double meanings, I believe this album title is at least two-fold in its metaphoric use.
The overall sound of the record is more stripped down then some of her recent work. With mostly guitar and bass, some overdubbed vocals and a few sound effects thrown in the mix. Her lyrics have always been what impressed me the most about her songs.
Current Metacritic Score: 74 ~ read more here.
Hypnotize ~ This song starts out with some dabbling on double bass and piano by Todd Sickafoose. It is a quiet, somber start to a reflective and solemn album.
Millennium Theater ~ Besides fighting against the death penalty, Ani combats the current administration. This song showcases her beliefs and puts a new spin on the 2000 election.
Reprieve ~ Her spoken word piece that covers more ground than the Eisenhower Interstate System.
If you have never heard an Ani release, this is probably not your best starting point (Little Plastic Castles would be my suggestion). But it is full of everything that makes Ani Ani. The funky guitar plucking. The spoken word feminist points. The touching love songs. If I had to give it a score, I would say it is a 3.5 star album.
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3 hullabaloos:
Neither Hiroshima nor Nagasaki was hit by an H-bomb. A hydrogen bomb is a nuclear fusion bomb, which wasn't developed until 1952. The bombs that were dropped on Japan were nuclear fission bombs, in those cases using uranium.
Personally, I would like to hear some great conservative (politically) folk/pop, or whatever it is you call the style that Ani does. If I had the talent for lyrics, maybe I would write my own. Ani is great at expressing herself, though.
Then again, I consider Bob Dylan's Christian "quadology" (Slow Train Coming, Saved, Shot of Love, Infidels) very conservative, though not very political. Neighborhood Bully (from Infidels) is very appropriate to the Israel/Hamas/Hezbollah situation as we know it today.
Ani is talking about the A-bomb, atomic bomb, and Hiroshima was an A-bomb testing spot. It happened in 1945... I think Ani did her research first.
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