Ani Difranco - Unprecedented Shit

 

Singer Ani Difranco's 23rd album Unprecedented Sh!t

These days, every artist's album needs to have a story, music can't speak for itself. But after 22 records, why can't Ani DiFranco's work speak for itself? Yes, her 2024 release Unprecedented Sh!t is shaped by stories — ones about reproductive freedom, the double-edged sword of the pandemic, identity and ever-evolving belief systems that have shaped each of its 11 songs. There are songs that were written in 2011 and in 2022; some for musicals, others for children's books. The album isn't linear, but it is inherently teeming with DiFranco's spirit.

It was paramount to the folk-feminist hero that listeners not be saddled with preconceived notions while diving into her 23rd album Unprecedented Sh!t.

"I believe there is a rhyme and a reason as to why these songs have come together in this way now and I want people to experience this album as a journey, a piece of art, without being influenced by a cacophony of surrounding narratives," DiFranco says.

While many of DiFranco's albums were made more insularly, she's opened herself up to collaboration in recent years. For 21 of DiFranco's 22 albums, she opted to self-produce. With Unprecedented Sh!t, she wanted to try working with a producer and tapped BJ Burton, who produced one of her favorite albums, Bon Iver's 22, A Million. With Burton's help, largely from afar, they created soundscapes often using only DiFranco's voice and guitar as the raw materials and manipulating them with effects and filters.

"I really wanted to lean into the power of machines in a way that I never have before, so BJ and I communicating through many layers of them in order to collaborate, seemed apropos. This record was made almost entirely by me and BJ alone, bouncing things back and forth."

The title Unprecedented Sh!t is not only representative of how much of a sonic departure the 11-track album is from Ani's other work, but also a political and social commentary on the current state of the world.

"We find ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level."

DiFranco believes if there's an overarching message to come from her record, it's in the final track, "The Knowing," a tender, existential lullaby that inspired DiFranco's eponymous 2023 children's book.

It's the idea that we can harness the power and value of identity without being limited to it. Identity is a tool perhaps, for understanding and affirming diversity, but beyond that, it is an illusion, and our true nature exists on a level wholly more primary than any of the stories we tell.

1. Spinning Room

2. Virus

3. More or Less Free

4. Baby Roe

5. Unprecedented Sh!t

6. New Bible

7. Boots of a Soldier

8. You Forgot to Speak

9. The Thing At Hand

10. Interlude

11. The Knowing

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