With Educated Guess, Ani DiFranco returns to her roots in no uncertain style. For the first time since 1991's Not So Soft album, she provides all voices and instrumentation, and this time has even recorded and mixed herself. And, amazingly, rather than producing a tinny and echoing sparseness, these self-imposed parameters have driven DiFranco to deliver some of her finest work. There are four excellent beat poems here--the brief and hardhitting "Platforms" and "Akimbo" and the more exploratory "Grand Canyon" and "The True Story of What Was". But the real stand-outs are "Bodily" and the closing "Bubble", with their deep, rootsy riffs and brilliant vocal performances, DiFranco managing to flit through octaves without losing emotional force. There's also the affecting "You Each Time", where she comes over like an ethereally jazzy version of that other great maverick, Victoria Williams.
Throughout, her lyrics are well-wrought, the dissection of a past relationship on "Origami" proving that her avowed feminism is not of the bigoted variety. Indeed, her perceptive and pointed descriptions often recall the work of Paul Simon. Educated Guess will be a real treat for all longstanding DiFranco fans, and for anyone seeking the very best American acoustic music. This is an idiosyncratic and very necessary voice. --Dominic Wills
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