Not a Pretty Girl

by

Ani DiFranco

Edit

I own Not So Soft,Imperfectly, Living In Clip, Little Plastic Castle, The First Album, Out of Range, and Puddle Dive, and although I love each and every one of these albums, I keep returning to Not a Pretty Girl again and again. This album marks a transition from Ani's more acoustic and light sound (The First Album, Imperfectly) to her more hard-edge music (Dilate, Little Plastic Castle). I love both phases but I'd have to say I'm happiest in the middle. This CD combines folk and rock for the best glimpse of Ani that i have found. If you are a new Ani fan, this is the best album to own because it really showcases her talent. You are able to hear her loud, passionate work in "The Million You Never Made" ( the song that has my favorite lyric- life is a sleazy stranger flirting with a bimbo named disaster at the end of the bar...I'm telling you I'm different than you are), her softer work in "32 Flavors" and "This Bouquet", her spoken poetry in "Tiptoe", her acoustic edge in "Cradle and All", and her lyrical mastery in nearly every track but especially in "Hour follows Hour" and "Shy". Ani is a singing poet, a true musical genius. If you are tired of everyday bubblegum pop and you want to hear a true artist who thinks of her music as art, pick up an Ani CD. You won't be disappointed. I never have been. She isn't for everyone, but she may just be for you.

It is exceedingly obvious how it is very difficult to balance the ultra-machisma of radical feminism with genuinely musical gentleness and melody - the two are simply too opposed to work well together at least normally. However, Tori Amos on her first two albums and Ani DiFranco on her first six between 1990 and 1994 actually were able to mix these contradictory impulses to create music that, in their different ways, each combined beauty with literacy and made truly personal themes much more political than they ever were with the anti-war counterculture of the 1960s.

By the time of her 1994 masterpiece Out of Range, Ani DiFranco was having a growing cult following and being courted by major labels, She was vehemently opposed to being signed because she felt she would, as outlined on her well-known "The Millions You Never Made", lose most of the money she gained from working on her own label. the paradox is that from a 2010 perspective DiFranco's own production begins on "Not a Pretty Girl" to resemble much more the production of specialist producers like Glen Ballard (the dreadful gigaseller Jagged Little Pill) than the spartan sound she gave her previous albums. "The Millions You Never Made" does stand as the clearest example of the change coming her over Ani DiFranco's music, but even "Crime for Crime" and the rather lame title track show that she lost a lot of the crisp funkiness that made her first six albums so good.

It is true that, on comparison with her dated and often pompous late 1990s work that made her into a significant seller on the album market, "Not a Pretty Girl" does contain some moments that show her, like on "Out of Range", expanding her early sound without losing anything. The fierce third track "Cradle and All" has a particularly impressive opening that rings even more powerfully than "Out of Range", and "Shy" is not far behind. The slower tunes, however, lack equally the sheer power and starkness one would expect after listening to her first few albums.

All in all, even with some good songs on it, "Not a Pretty Girl" is the beginning of the end for Ani DiFranco as one of the outstanding talents of the 1990s. After this, despite retaining control of her own work, she misused it to such an extent that her music had many of the worst qualities of major label female rockers from the era.