LA2, London, England 17th December 1996

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"Hard Act To Follow"

"She came up through the New York coffee house/college circuit that nurtured Suzanne Vega and Michelle Shocked, and she still plays the occasional Woody Guthrie song at her shows. But, at 26, Ani DiFranco is a new, tougher breed of folk singer from a different generation. A lesbian role model and tirelessly independent entrepreneur (all eight of her albums have been released on her own Righteous Babe record label) she uses her songs to explore her emotions in forthright language and often self-lacerating detail.

"Onstage, she runs a tight ship. At the LA2 she was accompanied only by drummer Andy Stochansky and bass player Sara Lee (formerly of the Gang Of Four). At the front DiFranco cut a strong, slightly severe figure in black waistcoat and trousers, a ring through her nose, hair short and tufty. Her banter between songs was was friendly but highly strung, as she jokily complained about always playing to audiences full of expatriate Americans, the trauma of seeing her reflection in a mirror and the nerve of certain representatives from distribution companies in Europe who seem to think they have something to do with her record company. This led neatly into Napoleon, a stern warning of the perils musicians face when accepting the corporate shilling.

"She paused several times to wrap black tape around the fingers of her right hand, a sensible precaution given the ferociously percussive picking style which she used to propel numbers such as Blameless [sic], with its clipped, funky undertow and jazz-like scat interludes.

"While many of her songs were driven by a quietly seething anger, there was poetry in her words. "The wind is ruthless / The trees shake angry fingers at the sky," she sang in Done Wrong, an unbearably poignant number in which her voice rose from the merest whisper to a raging snarl and back again.

"It was a mightily impressive display which confirmed that DiFranco has the talent to become a major international star, capable perhaps of occupying a niche somewhere between Tori Amos and Alanis Morrissette. Whether she will allow it to happen is another matter."

Taken from The Times