The world needs more radicals like Ani DiFranco: wry, sexy, as committed to beauty and joy as revolution. Her 17th LP is buoyed by communal seas: fellow political activists carrying the torch (the New Orleans art-funk update of the folk-standard title track); weed smokers weighing culture hypocrisy ("J"); a homeless mom baring her heart ("Life Boat"). Channeling multiple voices and styles, DiFranco rises to the cultural moment with a grin: "If you're not getting happier as you get older," she reasons on "If Yr Not," a deliciously noisy slow grind, "then you're fuckin' up."

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• Photos: Random Notes

“The Everchanging Spectrum of a Lie”

The opener off the Welsh group’s The Big Roar album was an epic one, but the band was worried that track had polarized fans. “The first song is eight minutes long,” Rhydian Dafydd, the Joy Formidable bassist, said. “If you did that in the Seventies people would be, ‘Whatever.’ You do it now, people think, ‘Holy s---!’ Some people think it’s the f---ing greatest track on the entire album, and some people think it’s f---ing boring. It’s that element of needing to challenge people.” The band concluded through the song’s lyrics that love was the “everchanging spectrum of a lie.”