Ani DiFranco- ¿Which Side Are You On?

January 11, 2012 | by Joseph Brownell

When I talk about Ani DiFranco, people often discount her as an angry lesbian. Don’t get me wrong, DiFranco has some angry songs in her catalog but she’s been releasing albums since 1990. While there’s nothing wrong with being angry, the problem is people have confused anger with a message. She’s succeeded through two decades of making music so apparently there’s an audience getting the message.

Over the years, DiFranco has become part of a musical family tree that branches from New Orleans to New York. Over the last decade, you’ve heard her tracks mature, the same way a tree grows and its roots lodge themselves deeper into the ground. While she now calls New Orleans her home, Righteous Babe Records still makes its home in Buffalo, NY. This album features Cyril Neville, Pete Seeger, saxophonist Skerik (Bonnie Raitt, REM, Pearl Jam) and even shows DiFranco’s commitment to the principles she espouses by including The Roots of Music Marching Crusaders, part of a music education program for at-risk middle-school students in New Orleans.

The title track Which Side Are You On, a labor anthem written in the 1930’s and popularized by Pete Seeger in the 1960’s, has been contemporized in the current political and economic climate by DiFranco. On J, DiFranco compares our materialistic society to a drug addiction and laments that it’s illegal to smoke marijuana but not to push the need for increased consumption upon the masses. The New Orleans metaphor that permeates the first part of the track is a strong testament to the lingering effects of Katrina. On Promiscuity, DiFranco eschews the fact that promiscuity is bad when she sings “ . . . how you gonna know what you need what you like til you been around the block a few times on that bike . . .” The only track in which I miss the message is Amendment, but that may be because I’m not a woman.

While the angry message songs are there, it’s the songs of reflection and love (yes, love songs) that are the album’s strongest tracks. On If Yr Not, DiFranco sings “ . . . if yr not getting happier as you get older then your f***ing up . . .” Upon listening to Hearse, I could only envision the picture of the dog at the soldier’s funeral that was plastered over the internet earlier this year. Love can be a powerful emotion and DiFranco sums it up when she sings “. . . I will follow you into the next life like a dog chasing after a hearse . . .”

Ani’s albums can sometimes feel a bit uneven but ¿Which Side Are You On? may be her strongest album since Little Plastic Castle. I used to bank on the fact that DiFranco would release an album every 12-18 months, but maybe the 3 year lag between this and 2008’s Red Letter Year really pays off. Ani, you asked which side am I on . . . yours. B+

Ani DiFranco plays at Variety Playhouse February 3rd.