Ani Difranco Allergic to Water

DiFranco spruces up her sparse folk arrangements with the odd brass band, accordion, and even an electric guitar or two, but the meat of these songs is still her distinctively funky acoustic guitar style (she borrowed her rhythmic plucking technique from R&B, but unplugged, it bears no resemblance to its genre of origin). Meanwhile, DiFranco's spunky activist lyrics are tempered here by a bigger dose of vulnerability than in previous albums, which allows for a unique mix of anger, humor, and poignancy. The best songs this time around are not bitter, but quietly reflective ("You Had Time," "Buildings and Bridges," "If He Tries Anything").

The transcendent new album from Ani Di Franco, Revolutionary Love marks the latest proof of one of her most powerful gifts as an artist: a rare ability to give voice to our deepest frustrations and tensions, on both a personal and political level.

Ani DiFranco showed musical growth on her second album, playing her guitar more fluidly and adding occasional harmony vocals on the choruses and even the occasional bit of percussion. Her songs had more structured melodies with shorter, more direct lyrics that sounded more like song lyrics and less like free-form poetry than those on her first album. And her subject matter also saw changes, as she for the most part moved beyond the edgy breakup songs of her debut to less personal, more political concerns, including an attack on the music business ("The Next Big Thing").