Righteous Babe

Anybody who has followed Ani DiFranco’s prolific career knows that while the warm pluck of her acoustic guitar that defined her earlier years is still there, she’s continued to push the creative envelope through collaborators and album productions in recent years. What hasn’t changed, as evidenced on Which Side Are You On, is her continued sense of outrage – she’s as pissed off as ever at our governmental and societal failures was – and her unflappable sense of faith in humanity to somehow still right its wrongs. Whether it is on the electrified, incendiary title track (with Pete Seeger supplying banjo), the slow reggae burn of “J” or the heavy metal-chorded (but acoustic) “Amendment,” DiFranco takes on socio-political inequity, calls out Obama ( “Dude could be FDR right now and instead he’s just shifting his weight” ) and demands greater civil rights for women. And if DiFranco’s then-recent motherhood partially defined 2008’s Red Letter Year, then her successful quest to find frames Which Side. “Albacore” and “Hearse” prove that her acute honesty about matters of the heart still haven’t lost any knockout power.