Ani DiFranco - 'Red Letter Year'

On Red Letter Year, Ani DiFranco delivers some good old fashioned catharsis. After several years of albums full of introspective, navel-gazing heartbreak songs ("Second Intermission") and tunes that rip the government ("Millenium Theater"), Red Letter Year delivers a collection of songs that recognizes the beauty in the world, celebrates love, and admits the rare peace that comes with vulnerability.

The disc begins and ends with a tribute to New Orleans, relating the many-layered emotions and experiences inherent in the year of Katrina. The title track's blatant sadness depicts a city angling into its own disaster, starting with New Year's Eve 2005 and following through to the storm. The horns blare hard against DiFranco's effortless guitar, like a train whistle howling in the distance or a ship barreling down the Mississippi. It's an interesting choice to kick off a disc that, at least the first time around, seems brimming with happiness.

But—as is customary for DiFranco—after a few spins, there emerges a much more well-rounded collection than simply a stack of googly-eyed love songs. Between adoring the way someone eats a sandwich and cooing over her daughter, DiFranco looks back on her days as a fearless kid ("Emancipated Minor") and the degree to which she managed to buck the system simply by sticking to her convictions ("Alla This"). While the latter may harken back to some of her damn-the-man tunes of a decade ago, this time its sung from a place more based on empowered joy than determined defiance.

"Atom" (purchase/download) is a stirring love song to the world and all its divine interconnections. The atom, she sings, "unit[es] bird and rock and tree, and you and me...the one single structure to which everything distills: the air, the wood smoke there, and the hills."

Another highlight is "Good Luck" (purchase/download) whose star is drummer Alison Miller. The percussion starts out long and langid, then sputters and falls away, barely touching cymbals, allowing the lyrics to take the fore and stumble over their own rhythm ("like an avalanche of detour signs falling off a truck"). It's a little dark gem in the middle of the disc, contrasting "Present/Infant" (purchase/download) and "Landing Gear" (purchase/download), which both beautifully relate the profound impact of motherhood.

Also poignant is the extended reprise of the title track, played exquisitely by New Orleans' Rebirth Brass Band. Where "Red Letter Year" (purchase/download) starts with celebration and ends in disaster, DiFranco flips that narrative on its head, kicking off the disc singing about the storm and ending it with a celebration. Clearly, after 20 turns in the studio, she's well aware of how to tell a compelling story not only from verse to verse, but also from song to song.

When she made her first album 18 years ago, the recording industry was thriving. Independent artists were a rare nonentity, and printing one’s own cassette tapes, bucking industry standards, was a radical thing.

A few industry evolutions, various collaborations, turns as producer and songwriter, thousands of days onstage, 20 solo albums, 11 band members, and a handful of national disasters later, DiFranco has a lot to be happy about. She may spend a few lyrics in "Way Tight" (purchase/download) narrowing her accomplishments down to laughable simplicity ("I've fixed up a few old buildings and planted a few trees"), but she is one of a tiny community of trail blazers who tested the tepid waters of self-ownership in the days before MySpace and iTunes.

Now, as she presses on amid the swirling din of "indie" rockers and fledgeling punk-folksingers, it's no wonder Red Letter Year is such an artful celebration, and one of her best efforts yet.