Judging from the pre-tour publicity, Ani DiFranco was one spiky babe who
has made a career out of refusing to follow convention. Eleven albums on her
own label, Righteous Babe, by the age of 28 paid tribute to her
self-possession and review of live performances from US newspapers conjour
up images of audiences cowering in the face of DiFranco's aural assault.
A cynic might have inferred that DiFranco had more attitude than talent. On
this showing the cynic would be wrong. DiFranco is good. Maybe she was trying
to woo new adherents but, on Tuesday, the promised tiger was virtually a
kitten. A feisty kitten sometimes, but aside from one skewering voice and
guitar solo effort - preceded by a poem recited to silence: now there's
audience control - this was no more confrontational and unconventional than
the next singer-songwriter.
Forget her lesbian following. DiFranco writes songs for everyone. Charmed
must be the existence of the person who can't relate to her "you are a china
shop and I am a bull" line on strained relations. She writes good tunes,
uses middle eights (hey, revolution), and deploys her wordsmith talents with
relish, telling late nineties urban jungle stories of drug wars,
dysfunctional families and confessional TV with sharp, but easily palatable
realism.
Her trio of keyboards, bass and drums convey her changing musical settings,
slipping from hip hop to rubbery funk to back porch country and responding
to her every lyrical mood, from disdain to vulnerability, with not a whisper
out of place.
Rob Adams
Glasgow Herald