Ani DiFranco

"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... More >

DiFranco has always been beat-happy. From the beginning you can catch her speed-strumming just for the rush, but in general her guitar figures and her sense of rhythm are both much quirkier; older folkies would have diagnosed them as symptoms of some awful nervous disorder. In the spare and agile Andy Stochansky, who isn't averse to powering up but more characteristically states and embellishes a single eccentric line with brushes or mallets or lightly wielded sticks, she may have found the best folk-rock drummer who's ever lived, and this live double-CD, which draws liberally on her formative folk-punk years for those who only caught on with Dilate, is his showcase. Joined as well by the supplest of her several bassists, Gang of Four stalwart Sara Lee, DiFranco proves herself not just miraculously arch and sisterly and sexy and effervescent, but a bandleader who has wiggled free of deadening acoustic-with-backup commonplaces--and evolved from the truth of "Smile pretty and watch your back" to that of "We lose sight of everything when we have to keep checking our backs." (Grade: A-)