Reprieve Review



One of the reasons I don't do album reviews is that I don't believe I could ever be as eloquent as most reviewers are. Take this review of Ani's new Reprieve album... I couldn't have said it better. :) Then below that is some interesting background on the album's cover (from the Righteous Babe website).

Album Review: Ani DiFranco, "Reprieve" (Righteous Babe)
August 17, 2006 10:58 AM
by GF Sheffer
LiveDaily Contributor
http://www.livedaily.com/news/10561.html

Ani DiFranco (music) is among rock music's most underrated--and under valued--artists. As prolific as Ryan Adams, but without the self-destructive streak, as talented as Billy Corgan, only with a sense of humor, DiFranco is always pushing her boundaries. Her latest album, "Reprieve," finds the songwriter in an introspective mood.

There's hardly a drumbeat to be found on "Reprieve." It is one of DiFranco's quieter, more subtle efforts--all voice and acoustic guitar, with some ethereal sound effects thrown in to add bolster the disc's odd vibe. That doesn't mean she's lost her bite. Always articulate, intelligent and political, the radical young feminist still lingers beneath Ani's skin, revealing herself proudly on the best tracks on "Reprieve."

The stars and stripes take center stage on both "Decree" and "Millennium Theater," a surreal night out where Chief Justices are for sale, the ice caps are melting and "New Orleans bides her time." This is simmering, smart, progressive folk music whose lyrics recall the diatribes of Woody Guthrie or early Dylan. DiFranco's guitar playing is something else altogether--gentle but angular, with unexpected notes that cut like shrapnel.

On quieter albums like "Reprieve," DiFranco is inclined to include some spoken-word--the niche that gave her her start in her early days as a New York City troubadour. Die-hard fans will embrace the singer's musings in these moments. But, really, Ani's passion is undeniable throughout much of "Reprieve," an elegant, understated folk album that may take some time to seep in, but will stay with you once it does.

the story behind the cover
“… it’s sixty years later 
near the hypo-center of the a-bomb
i’m in the middle of hiroshima
watching a twisted old eucalyptus tree wave
one of the very few lives that survived and lives on
remembering the day it was suddenly 
thousands of degrees in the shade …”
The tree on the cover of Reprieve is not just any tree.
It’s the one that inspired Ani to write the lines above, taken from the title track of the album. It’s a real tree, photographed in Nagasaki on August 10, 1945. Photographer Yosuke Yamahata travelled into the city the day after it was levelled in an instant by an atomic bomb. (He had just travelled through Hiroshima a few days earlier, immediately before that city was also destroyed.) Most of the images he shot while documenting the devastation chronicle an unspeakable “hell on earth,” to use his term, but one image stands in contrast to the horrors of war: a lone tree, half destroyed while the other half remained intact. For many viewers, it has become a symbol of resilience and hope.
Yamahata writes: 
“Human memory has a tendency to slip, and critical judgment to fade, with the years and with changes in lifestyle and circumstance. But the camera, just as it seized the grim realities of that time, brings the stark facts … before our eyes without the need for the slightest embellishment.”
Click here to see the original photo and learn more about Yamahata’s Nagasaki series.
Special thanks to Shogo Yamahata for preserving the legacy of his father’s work.

Posted: Thu - August 17, 2006 at 02:33 PM           |

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