Ani DiFranco: Living In Clip : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"I am 32 flavors and then some," Ani Difranco sings, and she's not kidding. There's Difranco, the 26-year-old singer/songwriter, guitar player, percussionist, producer and arranger. There's the DIY overseer of her Righteous Babe label, based in Buffalo, N.Y. And there's the self-made merchandising machine whose records have sold more than a half-million copies without commercial-radio or video airplay and whose tours now haul in millions in revenue.

There's also Difranco the feminist rabble-rouser and yearning romantic, the live-and-let-live Everywoman and the solitary outsider, the in-your-face rocker and the introspective folk singer.

You want comedy? "I'm starting to get over the urge to kill somebody," she says by way of introduction to "Out of Range," one of 32 scoops (31 tracks and the obligatory "hidden" track) of prime Difranco on the live double-CD "Living in Clip." Independence? On "Not So Soft," she declares, "I always wanted to be commander in chief of my own one-woman army." Noble ambition? On "I'm No Heroine," she offers a mission statement: "I just write about what I should've done/I sing what I wish I could say/And I hope somewhere, some woman hears my music/And it helps her through her day."

On eight previous studio albums, thin production has turned some of that flavorful complexity to vanilla. Those releases documented the songs but not the singer, the ideas but not the shades of emotion that ignited and sustained them. On the road, Difranco fills the room not just with songs that she reinterprets almost nightly but with a personality that's spiked with offbeat confessions, self-deprecating humor and loopy wisdom.

Which is why "Living in Clip" defies the clich'e9 - it's the rare live album that is more than just a respite between songwriting binges. The CD has four new songs, including a brisk, bracing tale of romantic conflict called "Gravel." But more significantly, it puts the oldies in a context in which both initiates and nonbelievers can understand why Difranco is rightly regarded by many as one of the decade's defining voices. Many of her best-known songs are reconfigured with the help of drummer Andy Stochansky and bassist Sara Lee, and despite a couple of missteps - notably a turgid "Amazing Grace" done with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra - these versions blow away the studio originals.

Difranco brings a jazz singer's elastic phrasing to her songs, and this enables her to shape and reshape them like a punk Cassandra Wilson. Though at times Difranco indulges in bring-down-the-rafters wailing that recalls the excesses of Melissa Etheridge, she also has developed a nuanced vocabulary that shifts in a blink from boho rap to bedroom whisper, wordless moan to feral roar.

On "The Diner," Difranco communicates her mounting anxiety about a romance with chantlike heavy breathing, in tandem with Stochansky. On "Willing to Fight," she chokes on the syllables as she rages against passive acceptance of injustice. On "Untouchable Face," her delicately controlled delivery juggles seething jealousy with trembling vulnerability. Even more so than on the studio original, found on the 1996 release "Dilate," Difranco wrestles with the realization that the cure for her longing lies within: "Who am I? Somebody just tell me."

For all the confidence she brings to performing, it is Difranco's willingness to acknowledge and even embrace such uncertainty that makes her so appealing. It's only in her career-long series of songs that bash the hopelessly easy target of corporate rock that she comes across as strident and judgmental. Only one of these, "Napoleon," is included on "Living in Clip," and it builds into a huffing, puffing finale that sounds all too pat.

Far more persuasive is her eerie "Every State Line," on which she details what it feels like to travel outside that mainstream cocoon, a lone female troubadour with a strange haircut who learns that survival depends on learning to "smile pretty and watch your back." In such circumstances, a singer's only ally is her guitar, and Difranco has learned how to use hers like a second voice. It's perhaps the most underrated component of this performer's arsenal, a hybrid of rock assault, Eastern drone and folk melodicism. She's not much for solos, but her buzzing tone, gossamer delicacy and rub-it-till-it-bleeds chording would make most backup bands superfluous. Which is why Stochansky fits in so well - he's a versatile drummer who takes pleasure in framing the singer's voice or conspiring with Lee to embolden it. As the foil for most of Difranco's onstage jokes and musings, he plays a valuable role by affirming that this singular performer's art isn't just a girl thang.

Difranco certainly doesn't downplay her gender, she just doesn't turn it into a caricature. On "Living in Clip," she shows the full range of not just what it means to be female but to be human. "I'm beyond your peripheral vision/So you might want to turn your head," she suggests. On this sprawling album, she gives us the big picture, a wide-screen portrait of