Ani diFranco educated guess
Released: January 20, 2004 Origination Year: 2004 Time: 48:22 Tracks: 14 Produced by: Ani diFranco Style: Studio Format: CD Enhancement: None Website: N/A

Ani diFranco is to independence what blue is to the sky. You cannot separate the natural inclinations of how they interact with the world at large. diFranco’s career is a pretty interesting one when you consider the allure of her music and the fact that any label would be pleased to sign her to a contract. But her independence and the need to produce music however she bleeds it could never float on the waters of a large hits-dependent label. One listen to any of Ani diFranco’s albums - any of them - will quickly prove this because of their unconventionality. Unconventionality can be death to many performers and artists but that is certainly not so for Ani. Ani’s talent is being able to communicate her feelings in a free-form way.

Educated Guess is Ani diFranco’s first studio album in quite a long time. But the wait has been worth it. Although Ani hasn’t deprived her audience by neglecting to issue music in whatever methods she chooses, it’s quite nice to get fresh studio work from her. The album’s 14 tracks are a bare-naked collection of poetry placed to music.

Ani diFranco best expresses her feelings lyrically. With the first track being a spoken introduction, “platforms" revs the album’s direction into gear by expressing how life is a weight that knocks her around. It also explicitly brings to the forefront her disdain for the power that guides the world by its nose. But more than that it reveals the necessity of starting over by finding one’s self yet again. That’s a lot of introspection and thought expressed in a 17 second reading.

The challenge of a diFranco album are the reflections contained therein. A diFranco album requires you to submerge into the depths of the words and to come up gasping but luxuriating in the briskness of an Ani diFranco observation. With music that is kept to the bare minimum without overproduction, Educated Guess bathes you with guitar and bass played freeform and feeling like a live performance. You listen and know that the songs were recorded in a single take. There isn’t a need to rehearse beyond the ‘learning the song’ stage, as the songs are strong enough to take on a life by themselves.

“Educated Guess” musically is as beautiful as a Coldplay melody, using her life as a basis and poetically creating a needle stitch of observations, merging them with a delicate sound that is capable of raising the hairs on your arms. “Bliss LikeThis” is a smokey club piece with slinky jazz undertones. The style is so raw that you can hear the echoes of the studio but yet is refreshing in its honesty and unpretentiousness. It doesn’t need the crutch of multitracks to smudge the reality of the vocal or the guitar. In “Bodily” the guitar is noisy with vibration and the strings can be tonally piercing at times but the overall effect is purity. With purity comes a respect, which is what Ani diFranco commands from her performances.

There are other spoken word-poems in the body of this album. “The True Story of What Was” is backed by a strong look at identity, an explorative surgery of the soul. "grand canyon" tells of a love for the country while establishing disdain for the government. Her insistence that we defer to the feminist to effect change is to express that the male warlike attitude is what threatens our existence. She may be right. diFranco's work is underscored by sparse music and a directness commanded by her vocals, the focal point of her pieces. The strum of the guitar/bass can be abrasive at time becoming a wall of noise that her vocals have to climb over with the buzz threatening to tear the delicate cones of your speakers.

Educated Guess is for the fan of thought provocative music of which Ani diFranco is the dispenser of. Whether you are female and you look upon her music as an extension of yourself or you are male and can absorb the lyrics of a "grand canyon" without feeling insulted by the feminist implication, then Educated Guess can be refreshing in its musical approach.

Dedicated to Kris Hallowell (1956-1995). Ani, she would have loved you.

Track Listing:

CD - platforms; swim; educated guess; origami; bliss like this; the true story of what was; bodily; you each time; animal; grand canyon; company; rain check; akimbo; bubble.

Ani diFranco: All instruments