Label : Righteous Babe
Review by Luisa Mercier
Ani diFranco has been working on this record since 2008. Which for an average musician is not that much. But Ani is not an average musician, she has always written very fast and in twenty-one years of musical career she has released seventeen albums. So, you will understand that three years is a vey large gap for her. In the meanwhile she became a mother, so her absence is explained quite easily.“Which Side Are You On?” follows “Red Letter Year” (2008) and is titled after a 1932 protest song composed by Florence Reece, wife of Sam Reece, who was a Kentucky unionist and a defender of the miners rights.
Ani rearranged and reinterpreted the song basing her version on the 1967 version of Peter Seeger who also plays banjo on this album. The record is divided among folk, rock and funk and addresses other issues like women rights (in “Amendment”), her opinion about promiscuity (“Promiscuity”) and shares with us her thoughts about life in “If Yr Not”. The album has been recorded in New Orleans (where she lives with her family) and in Brooklyn and Louisiana and features the collaboration of Ivan and Cyrill Neville (percussion and keyboards from The Neville Brothers), Skerik on the saxophone, the singer Anais Mitchell and guitar player Adam Levy.
Rating – 75/100
Tracklist
- Life Boat
- Unworry
- Which Side Are You On
- Splinter
- Promiscuity
- Albacore
- J
- If yr Not
- Hearse
- Mariachi
- Amendment
- Zoo
Line Up
- Ani Di Franco – Vocals
- Adam Levy – Guitar
- Anais Mitchell – Guitar & additional vocals
- Ivan Neville – Keyboards
- Cyrill Neville – Percussion
- Skerik – Saxophone
- Peter Seeger – Banjo
