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Ani Difranco’s latest release, Evolve, takes us through a surprising journey of musical variety. This time around, Difranco takes a step away from her usual political-driven lyrics. But don’t worry, she’s still just as outspoken and forward. This time, she focuses more on her music, infusing many musical sounds—from jazz to latin—with her usual folk rock sound.

The album, which is released on Difranco’s own record label, Righteous Babe, is the newest addition to the 20-something albums she has created or collaborated on. However, Difranco has named it one of her favorites so far.

“I always like the new record best, because it represents my most recent accomplishments, but in the end, of course, I loathe them all,” she states on her web-site. “There are some very positive things that this album represents to me, though, for sure…I think Evolve is an album spoken by my band in our own language—one we spend years developing.”

Evolve opens up with the slow, solemn tune, “Promised Land,” which Difranco has described as “a conversation between two women. Both those women happen to actually be me, but that’s beside the point.” The song seems to show mixed feelings about the adventurous path she has tumbled down throughout her lengthy musical career.

“In The Way” starts the mix of musical genres on Evolve with its jazzy, upbeat feel. However, “In the Way” is an angry song about a relationship gone sour. Difranco sings in the chorus, “Tell me, what is in the way / in the way of my love for you? / There’s something in the way / in the way of my love.” Difranco’s use of upbeat jazz music with her angry lyrics helps convey the song as blissful as well.

“Icarus” is a soothing track that follows the spitefulness of “In the Way.” “Icarus” tells the story of a very quiet person who always keeps his or her’s emotion bottled up inside. In the end of the song, Difranco sings, “You’re trying to learn to just sit inside your sadness / even if you’re sitting there alone / ’cause just like icarus ascending / never intending to look back / Nature’s law and your tragic flaw/ are vying to send you flying into the arms of another Venus fly trap.”

“Slide” is very adventurous, but takes on too much. The backup vocals and loud guitars and drums overpower Difranco’s quiet voice. They also become too distracting at some points, taking away from such clever lyrics as, “but we never see things changing / we only see them ending.” Like many of the songs on this album, “Slide,” tells a story. However, “Slide” is not as obvious as the others. It is more fluid and vague.

“O My My” is backed mostly by a piano (rather than Difranco’s guitar) which Difranco actually plays herself. “I wrote “O My My” on the piano to challenge myself, because I can’t actually play piano at all!,” she states on her web-site. “Having Julie [the pianist in her band] play it for me would defeat the purpose, now wouldn’t it? Besides, I always prefer to hear musicians taking chances, than to hear them playing it safe and getting it right all the time.”

“Evolve,” the title track, goes back to Difranco’s folk rock roots, featuring just Difranco and her guitar. It features a very catchy line in the chorus, “She is trying to evolve,” which Difranco notes represents the idea of this album. “…I felt that the song ‘Evolve’ epitomized or encapsulated a lot of the album’s central themes…It represents my state of mind at the end of the whole process of writing, performing, recording and mixing this body of work,” she stated on her web-site.

“Here for Now” is a fast, upbeat track that uses a lot of horns, giving it a latin feel. Difranco decided to give “Here For Now” a latin feel because “that’s just what my hands started playing on the guitar, which was naturally influenced by what I was listening to at the time.” Difranco recalls on her web-site, “…Latin pop artists were dominating the requisite Top 40 soundtrack to all public spaces. I was in a bar in Copenhagen when I first made up the main guitar riff. I remember it because I was walking around the venue all day, with my backpacker guitar slung over my back, just riffin’ on it.”

The second-to-last track, “Serpentine” is more of a poem than a song. It is the longest track on the album, clocking in at over ten minutes long. “Serpentine” certainly sticks to Difranco’s usual folk rock sound—The song opens with three minutes of Difranco softly playing her guitar. “It was a real doozy to record, because there is so much to it and it is so spare and exposed,” Difranco notes on her web-site. “I experimented with splicing takes together, but in the end decided it was more important to go with one performance than to achieve some kind of perfection or composure in every moment. At the end of that performance that appears on the record, I cried and cried. So I figured, ‘fine, I guess that’s it.’

Track listing
1. Promised Land
2. In The Way
3. Icarus
4. Slide
5. O My My
6. Evolve
7. Shrug
8. Phase
9. Here For Now
10. Second Intermission
11. Serpentine
12. Welcome To:

Find out more on Ani at righteousbabe.com

- Megan Higginbotham, Editor