Reprieve (CD - 2006)

Audio Mixers: Ani DiFranco; Mike Napolitano.

Recording information: Dust Bowl, Buffalo, New Yorl; Sugar Bowl, New Orleans, LA; The Dust Bowl, Buffalo, NY; The Sugar Bowl, New Orleans, LA.

Photographer: Danny Clinch.

If Ani DiFranco's ever-lengthening discography can be categorized into albums that take chances and those that tread on familiar ground, REPRIEVE, which largely scales back the fuller sound of 2005's KNUCKLE DOWN to DiFranco, her guitar, and Jim Stickafoose on bass, belongs to the latter set. Its recording interrupted by Hurricane Katrina, REPRIEVE retains the somber, self-reflective tone that characterized the period immediately after the disaster; as usual, DiFranco's stream-of-heart lyrics touch on every aspect of her world, from her appearance (as on "Half-Assed") to George W. Bush ("Millennium Theater") and more generalized post-millennial angst ("A Space"). The clean-but-not-spotless production by DiFranco stays out of the way to let the words connect, and, more often than not, they do. minimize