Description
Like a favorite chair, it’s easy to take Ani DiFranco for granted. Always there, always as expected, always comfortable/satisfying in her execution, it’s easy to miss the standards she maintains. And the way she pushes at the cuticle of the female condition in such delightfully savory ways.
On Binary, DiFranco casts a vast net across influences as she hones deeply humanist social commentary. Invoking Wiktionary’s definition of “binary” as not comparable, the activist/feminist/songwriter uses music to make the political alluring in a time of great stridence and division. Whether the lush soul/folk of “Pacifist’s Lament,” a silken consideration of being easier to stop trouble long before it starts that evokes “Gandhi and Dr. King and Aung San Suu Kyi” or the thumping sneaky funk of “Play God,” a throwdown for women’s physical autonomy in a right to life world, the Grammy and Woody Guthrie Award winner makes music so narcotic, the listener gets lost in the melody and groove long before they realize what truths these songs contain.
