Ani Difranco - Carnegie Hall 4.6.02

Genre rock Publisher Righteous Babe Records External Links Official Righteous Babe Website

Ani DiFranco's 2002 Carnegie Hall concert transports us right back to those shaky months after 9/11. Those shell-shocked months when most people weren't sure what to say, or what was appropriate to say, or even if saying anything was a good idea at all. But DiFranco is not most people. Seven months after 9/11 in New York City DiFranco starts off her set with "God's Country," a song about a state trooper that isn't exactly flattering, although it isn't utterly scathing either. Regardless, topically, it was a bold choice. Did she choose it because she wanted to show her audience that she wasn't going to shy away from the tough topics? Impossible to know for sure, but knowing DiFranco, it is highly possible. Her next choice again was not about lost love or gained love, but about America's uglier side. That deduction is not a reviewer's analysis of the hidden meaning in the lyrics. Thankfully for those who didn't fare too well in critical interpretation classes, DiFranco pretty much just lays her meaning out on the table, naked and easy to understand. Take, for instance, these lyrics from "Subdivision": "It's amazing the things that we all learn to do/So we're lead by denial like lambs to the slaughter/Serving empires of style and carbonated sugar water."

While the set list does include a few more personal songs like "Angry Anymore" and "Lil Girls," she tends to stick with the more political or philosophical songs that culminate with her spoken word poem "Self Evident." Her gasps, inflections, vocal quality all end up sounding almost exactly like her guitar and DiFranco's guitar sounds like no one else's, if you've heard her play then you know you could pick out one of her songs out of a musical line-up in three seconds. This solo acoustic show puts her distinctive guitar work front and center, and it also puts her observations, criticisms and feelings front and center as well. Sometimes they work, sometimes they feel a little too heavy handed, but then again this is Ani DiFranco we're talking about. She is not a woman known for hiding anything from her audience, least of all her personal beliefs.

The recording truly captures a moment in American history, or should I say, truly captures the moment's aftershocks-but is it a live recording that is essential to everyone's music collection? It seems to me that the emotion, the trepidation and the poetry, the things that make it stand out, are also the things that make it hard to listen to. It is certainly not the record I would recommend to someone who is new to DiFranco. In that case I would point them directly to Living In Clip which is not only one of DiFranco's best records, but one of the very few live recordings by any artist that is essential in anyone's music collection.