Critics' Choice: New CD's
By JON PARELES
Published: August 7, 2006
''Reprieve'' (Righteous Babe)
''I know where I'm going, and it ain't where I've been,'' Ani DiFranco sings near the beginning of ''Reprieve,'' the 18th studio album of a recording career that started in 1990. That's only partly true. Ms. DiFranco's songs still juxtapose the intimate and the political; her lyrics still spiral from image to insight. But lately she has moved away from the quick-strummed syncopated guitar and the rush of words that once defined her songwriting, paring down her music to draw a listener closer.
The songs on ''Reprieve'' are quiet and relatively sparse, often carried by lightly finger-picked guitar vamps. That doesn't exactly mean they're folky. Ms. DiFranco, who as usual is her own producer, is experimenting this time around with ambience. Subtle sounds -- acoustic instruments, electronic tones, environmental noises, distorted echoes -- well up around her, and they open up pockets of shadow around her usual pinpoint clarity. Now the atmosphere is as important as the words.
Ms. DiFranco's political songs preach to the converted, sometimes with a free-associative finesse, as in ''Decree,'' but just as often didactically, as in ''A Spade'' and in the spoken-word piece that's the title track of ''Reprieve.'' She can be just as didactic singing about her own sense of mission in ''Shroud.'' But in songs like ''Hypnotized,'' ''78% H2O,'' ''Nicotine'' or ''Unrequited,'' Ms. DiFranco stays less programmatic. As she sings about the elusiveness and complications of love, her music opens up, creating space for questions as well as answers. JON PARELES