Knuckle Down
Righteous Babe Records
The Verdict: Difranco delivers another standout album with the usual political and hopeful messages.
5 stars out of 5 stars
In the late 1980s a politically staunch folk musician from Buffalo, New York declined invitations from record companies, which claimed to offer something she couldn’t provide herself. Since 1990 she has produced an album every year under her own label, Righteous Babe Records. Along the way, the dread-locked folk queen encouraged other musicians to be self-sufficient, making significantly more money than people who sign with a commercialized record company.
With her new album, Knuckle Down, it seems like Ani Difranco is a natural at putting CDs out. A portion of it was written, however, during the production of her last release, Educated Guess (2004). Difranco produced her new album much differently than the last. Instead of administering everything solo, she hired another producer, Joe Henry, and six musicians join her. She said of her group, “I think they bring a lot of inspiration with them.”
After hearing an album produced by Henry, Difranco asked him to perform with her, to which he accepted. After the sweat, dancing and passion typical of Difranco shows, they struck up a partnership, contemplating the scale of a new album.
Instead of laying the 12 tracks in her built-in home studio, she and the additions laid them down in six days at La La Land Studios in Hollywood. On solo productions, she was used to getting up in the middle of the night to record. This took some getting accustomed to, and at the end of the week she said laughing, “Whose schedule is this? Who came up with this get-up-in-the-morning-and-sing business?” Changes like those had to be made, due to the multiple helpers, including her loyal traveling upright bassist, Todd Sickafoose.
During this rigorous week, Difranco and Henry completed two tracks a day from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Although her methodology changed, she certainly did not disappoint. If you listen to her other albums, you’ll expect a lot from this one. Once more, she delivers with heartache, political peril, goodwill and hope together in almost every song.
A violin and guitar mesh introduces Studying Stones, a lyrical drama about Difranco trying to understand why people tread through life without moving or feeling. Before the feminist revolution women were expected to be still, silent and mysterious. She combats this stereotype that they still conform to with an eloquently sung, “There’s never been an endeavor so strange as trying to slow the blood in my veins, to keep my face blank, as a stone that just sank.”
Manhole has a nonchalant angry mood, if that’s simultaneously possible. The drum, glockenspiel, violin and whistling by Andrew Bird added an intense angry punk feel to Ani’s empowering voice. The bitter ballad to her husband she split with last summer ended with, “I looked up to see integrity finally won over desire.”
In writing “Seeing Eye Dog,” Difranco originated a new metaphor for love, something hardly ever done in literature or music. Here the object of her affection is a seeing-eye dog. She explains in the first verse, “You take me there every time with that winning combination of loyal and kind, your eyes like wells to the water of your mind.”
Paradigm surfaces her political background telling the story of how her mother campaigned for democracy. Of course she will tell any journalist that the political and personal are not separate, that they equate each other. One of her controversial positions is that of paying taxes. She sings of her mother and her friends, “They were happy to pay taxes for the schools and roads happy to be here. They took it seriously, the second job of citizenry.” Ani is confident that paying taxes is participating in democracy. She tells Ron Ehmke, “The move to cut them is just playing into this baseline greed our culture is focused on now. That’s selfishness.”
In almost every album Ani puts out, she has at least one spoken word piece. Her new one, “Parameters,” is a poetic tale with subtle electric guitar picking and pausing dramatically. Here she tells of a strange man she found in her house, addressing the vulnerability that everyone innately has.
Like every other album, Knuckle Down, is distinct. Ani simply can’t stay in one place, but each time she moves to a different strategy, it works. Never has she better explained her art in her CD entitled, Evolve, when she sang, “I never took good pictures, cause I’m the kind of beauty that moves.”