Ani Difranco: Revolutionary Love | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- Ani Difranco has been forging her own singular musical path for three decades now - evolving in musical style but remaining a fiercely independent voice of social and gender conscience. Revolutionary Love is her 23rd full length album, and continues on that path.

The video for lead single Do or Die sees Ani shaving her head, riding around on a bike and spraying up political graffiti. It feels like she is winding the clock back 30 years to when a fiery young radical with an acoustic guitar first gained attention.

But look closer, and you can see things have changed a bit. For one; Revolutionary Love is full of elegant arrangements, complete with strings and woodwind, inspired by classic soul and jazz. Lyrically too, this is a different Ani Difranco to the one who famously declared not to be a pretty girl. The politics are still there of course. In Do or Die she sings “there's foxes in the henhouse and bad news every day / And right there on Pennsylvania Avenue the sheetless KKK”. When the title comes out in the chorus, you expect it to be a rallying call to the barricades. Yet the song turns out to be about empathy and restraint - lyrics about fighting against adrenaline and amygdala, about pausing and regrouping, and a sincere tribute to the ballot box.

Has Ani gone soft on us? Maybe. Next track Station Identification offers the platitudes “I have a dream and you have a dream / Why are we fighting each other? We should be working together”. Chloroform seems to be about those who expect her to be part of a culture of outrage, fixated on “demons and monsters all around”. Contagious is a call to hold the moral high ground in politics - “when they go low, you go high”.

It seems a surprising response to the current American zeitgeist from someone who has done as much as anybody to inspire the caricature of the angry feminist. But it’s not totally surprising. Long term fans of Ani Difranco have been privy to her developing thought processes over those prolific and confessional albums. And for every angry polemic, there have been tracks like Angry Any More or Buildings And Bridges, about learning to forgive and let go. Revolutionary Love feels like the extension of that to the political sphere. The opening title track begins with lines about tending her anger and grief. But by the second verse, she is singing “You can’t make me hate you and carry that hate around”.

The album ends with Crocus, a gorgeous ballad of new beginnings. “When the longest coldest winter finally lets go / And the first purple flower pokes up through the snow”. On an album ripe with biblical themes of turning the other cheek and letting those without sin cast the first stone, this feels like a prophecy of the promised land.

Revolutionary Love is a remarkable album and statement. There is a lot of anger in America right now from all angles. Ani could have cashed in by adding to it, in fact many of her fans probably wanted her to. Instead she has put forward a vision of courageous but gentle “revolutionary love”. Can it heal the wounds of a fractured America? Who knows, but this album is Ani Difranco offering the wisdom of someone who has fought her share of battles and still believes that love has the power to set us free.

- Andy Paine.
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