Lyrics pump up Difranco's 'Year' Musician Ani DiFranco’s latest album "Red Letter Year" features complex lyrics and emotion.
Album: "Red Letter Year" Grade: 4 stars
by Jim Abbott
"I've got myself a new mantra," Ani DiFranco announces in the early going of her new Red Letter Year. "It says, 'Don't forget to have a good time.' "
There are glimpses of joy on the indie-minded singer-songwriter's new studio album, but that emotion is encased in a complex shell that also exposes the singer's cerebral and fighting sides.
Lyrically, the songs are influenced by DiFranco's entrance into motherhood. "Present/Infant" revolves around the changes in attitude attached to the presence of her baby daughter:
"Now here's this tiny baby and they say she looks like me," she sings. "And she is smiling at me with that present/infant glee."
While that song unfolds above a cheery if vaguely urgent combination of guitars and keyboard, Red Letter Year is in no danger of drowning in sappy sentiment. DiFranco is as critical and cutting in her wordplay as ever, especially on the opening title track.
Introduced by a pensive marriage of plucked guitar and dissonant horns, the song joins initial images of celebration ("New Year's Eve we dropped mushrooms and danced 'round the house") with blistering couplets about the Katrina debacle in the final verse:
"Representing the white race, a man with a monkey for a face is flying over in a helicopter," DiFranco intones, her voice processed through what sounds like a bull horn. "Whistling Dixie and playing dumb in a town that might put a gun to your throat."
The harshness of the words is softened by the accompaniment: funeral horns by the Rebirth Brass Band that sound more noble than sad.
In typical fashion, DiFranco runs a lot of words over the music. Sometimes, on songs such as the hard-edged "Emancipated Minor," it's hard to make them out on the first pass.
It's worth the effort, though, because she still has a knack for evocative images, such as her description of a character as "an avalanche of detour signs falling off a truck" in "Good Luck."
Although that song isn't as positive as it sounds, DiFranco genuinely embraces her happy side on tunes such as "Smiling Underneath."
If that emotion is hard-won for her, it just makes it more interesting for the rest of us.
