Ani DiFranco - Out Of Range - 1995 (iTunes - Amazon)
"Just the thought of our bed makes me crumble like the plaster where you punched the wall beside my head."
Well, well, well. This is where I came in. When I was a reviewer for Home Theater Technology in the 90s this CD found it's way to my doorstep. I locked myself in my room for 45 minutes and came out a believer. And I worried that perhaps it had not aged well. Maybe, just maybe, it was one of those records that you REMEMBER as great, but it's really just a moment in time that soars.
That's not the case here.
After 4 grrl power femi-folk records, three that seemed to show growth and one that is just plain too hard to listen to, on her 5th record Ani does something that one might think she is capable of but doesn't care to do: write songs that could actually be sung by, well, anyone else.
Buildings and Bridges, Out of Range, these are songs that benefit from Ani and her singular playing style and attitude but there's no reason someone else couldn't pick them up and make them resonate. At 24 DiFranco seems to have gotten past her growing pains but not her anger. The empowered stripper in "Letter to a John" who is "gonna take the money make and I'm gonna go away", is more akin to a character one would find in a Springsteen song than a self-referential naval gazer that we've come to be accustomed to from her.
"I've got a face like a limp handshake, hair like an accident scene" -from Hell Yeah. The ugly girl is in love with someone out of her perceived league and our heart breaks for her but we know she's gonna be okay because she "learned how to write songs".
It's important that DiFranco allowed a larger "band" to participate in this record. There is percussion, more than ever before, accordion, sax, trumpet, bass, piano and backing vocals. It's all there, it's almost a band but the temper and timbre of the record never once steers away from the defiant DIYer from Buffalo that we have come to love.
And it rocks. "How Have You Been?" is a shaker with a funky mid-section horn break and the percussion solo later, and the full band version of the title track moves as well. It's not as successful but that could just be because we've already fallen in love with the earlier, more sparse version. As one of the first songs by what sounds like The Ani DiFranco Band, it soars, however. And there's a ton of muscle on "The Diner" to show just what this chick-folkie can dish out.
There is a vast expanse of growth between the dismal "Puddle Dive" and the mature, timeless "Out of Range". And it makes me excited to relive the next 3 records.
Grade A
A Side: Buildings & Bridges, Out of Range, How Have You Been?
BlindSide: Letter to a John, You had Time, The Diner
DownSide: The opening 2 minute piano intro to You Had Time. Skip it. Change the settings in iTunes.
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