Ani Difranco - s/t debut

I would like to say that this is "Ani Difranco's Masterpiece", but I would be lying. Not because it isn't incredible (it is), but because she released this - a gorgeous, complicated and often vicious album and has continued to better herself again and again ever since. Ani Difranco's discography is so vast that she is the only the artist in my CD collection who has her own designated shelf, in date order. This means that this CD lies at the far left, while the most recent Knuckle Down lies at the other end. There are certain comparisons to be made between her debut 19-year-old-girl recordings and her wisened musings on her latest album; over the years she has released albums with accompaniment from drum machines, full orchestras, jazz bands, spoken word poets and even hip-hop backing, but after proving her undeniable worth in all of these styles she has chosen to return once more to just her and her guitar; stripped-down, honest and exposed.

When you hear Ani almost-literally wearing her heart on her sleeve in this way, it's not hard to visualise the steps she has made in her life. Her last record was full of hard-hitting songs about divorce, loss, her ex-husband, while her first-record is just as brutal in it's delivery only we see utterly different topics playing on the younger Ani's mind. She sings about love, sex, abortions, her new life in New York... but while Ani's concerns have changed, and perhaps broadened, over the years, it's apparent that her talent for extremely beautiful lyrics was developed young, and the trademark choppy quiet/loud guitar-playing is noticeable already. The vocals sound much younger - she sounds sweet, as if making an effort to play her vocal chords as intricately as her guitar, while she has since realised that she sometimes needs to spit and yell her words into the microphone to get people's full attentions.

You get the feeling that if Ani Difranco had never ever released another album after this (let's imagine that she did a Jeff Buckley) that this would, or should, be recognised as one of the greatest debuts. After all, a couple of her all-time greatest songs are already on this album. As it happened, she kept releasing albums and each one was a little different and there's a strange trend whereby each is a little better than the last, which somehow means that her debut has faded into the dark realms of DiFranco history, when it deserves much more recognition than it gets. It is Ani proving that she's been writing great songs, playing amazing guitar and singing her heart out from the beginning, and she has stayed true to the foundations she laid out in this album ever since.

Both Hands
Fire Door

You can order this album from Amazon