Wondering through my local town centre today, I bumped into one of the locality’s aspiring rock musicians. He informed that another local band had just been signed to Polydor on a five-album deal after years of desperately trying, and months of negotiations. In complete contrast, Ani DiFranco has never strived for a record deal, preferring to plough her own very individual and distinguished career furrow. For many years she performed solo until she assembled a few excellent musicians to perform and record with her around ten years ago. Recording on her own record label, she has released around 30 albums and sold several million of them to fans the world over. Last year, I saw DiFranco perform her bi-annual gig at Manchester University’s Academy 2 venue. I have seen her perform on five or six separate occasions with her band, but this time she performed solo with her six Alvarez acoustic guitars. It was a special performance, a memorable performance. DiFranco seemed more relaxed, happier, and a little more liberated. She has always been able to connect with her audience in a way few other artists can, but this time that connection was more intimate, more complete.

EDUCATED GUESS sustains that intimacy with DiFranco’s first solo album in ten years. Recorded at home on a vintage analogue 8 track, it’s almost like a private conversation between artist, guitar and listener. You can imagine reams of handwritten notes spread around the room, with DiFranco making micro adjustments as the recording process unravels. You can imagine her cat snuggling up with demands for attention and sustenance. It’s that sort of recording. Sonically, it’s about as intimate as you can get, with her bass tuned guitar appearing to be playing in your listening room with startling power and clarity. DiFranco’s voice seems to have found new levels of expression both when she sings and during four spoken word recitations. She has always been a progressive and distinctive singer/songwriter, and here she has reached an even higher level of maturity and lyrical strength. When listening to this album, it is vital to have the song lyrics at hand (that come as a standard accessory in all DiFranco record sleeve notes) to fully appreciate the beauty, openness, accessibility, humanity and poetry uniquely available here.

The album opens with a spoken word piece called Platform that serves to introduce the album: “Life knocked me off my platform, so I pulled out my first pair of boots, bought on the street at Astor Place, before New York was run by suits, and I suited up for the long walk, back to myself, closer to the ground now, with sorrow, and stealth.” It sounds as though events and experiences may have caused a seed change in the future direction of this great artist… The song Swim follows with an incredibly powerful guitar opening and DiFranco singing with a childlike, almost mischievous voice. Melody is not a strong point here, but tone and lyrics are, with perhaps a sign of that self-doubt which inevitably follows self-realisation: “ You keep telling me I’m beautiful, but I feel a little less so each time… but I finally drove out where, the sky is dark enuf to see stars, and I found I missed no one, just listening to the swishing of distant cars .”

Educated Guess opens with a rambling, subterranean guitar riff, before another turn in vocal identity manifests itself. There’s a stronger melody, a jazzy vibe and another set of absorbing lyrics: “Yes school is in session, get your chin off your desk, now pick up your pencil, and turn over your test, use your education, and take an educated guess, about me.” Only days ago I was helping a university student with an essay on a selected artist and their media profile. The student had crazily selected Ani DiFranco whose media profile is at best cloudy, and at worst non-existent. I observed that the best way to find out about the lady was to listen to her music and lyrics. I just wondered if that’s what she’s singing about here…

DiFranco covers a wide spectrum of personal subject matter on the album including loving relationships (”I know men are delicate, original creatures, who need women to unfold them, hold them when they cry, but I am tired of being your savior, and I’m tired of telling you why.”), her love of country and disdain of politics (”I love my country, by which I mean, I am indebted joyfully, to all the people throughout its history, who have fought the government to make right…” “…and there’s this brutal imperial power, that my passport says I represent, but it will never represent where my heart lives, only vaguely where it went.”), and her observations of the wealth culture (”More and more there is this animal, looking out through my eyes, at all the traffic on the road to nowhere, at all the shiny stuff around to buy, at all the wires in the air, at all the people shopping, for the same blank stare, at America the drastic, that isolated geographic, that’s become infested with millionaires.”).

EDUCATED GUESS is a stunning sonic, vocal, lyrical and instrumental testament to a maturing and increasingly aware singer/songwriter, and one who is certainly one of the most important in recent history. At the back of my mind is the thought that DiFranco is preparing for a lonely and prolonged assault on American values, and maybe, just maybe, she wants to protect those around her from the flack that will inevitably follow. Be that as it may, this album; with reflections of anger, love, hate, fear and hope in song and verse; is a thing of wonder that her fans in particular will treasure, and others should not ignore. And if you happen to be an audiophile, prepare to be blown away…

5/5