Righteous Babe

Backing the glory of winning her first Grammy last year, DiFranco delivers a set of tracks that have a prettier twist than her former efforts. DiFranco’s rawness and fierceness has dwindled down with every album from straight-up angry anthems like “Fire Door” to, more recently sad sulkers like “I Know This Bar.” Knuckle Down doesn’t go very far away from its weak predecessor Educated Guess.
Her recent albums have fallen pray to commonplace melodies and new wailing vocals that DiFranco recently picked up and should drop (see: “Knuckle Down”). But there are other songs that have a promise, like dejected “Studying Stones” and the freshest track on the album “Sunday Morning.”
This album marks the first time DiFranco teams up with a co-producer, Joe Henry. However, it seems that DiFranco, being as adamant as she is, did not grant any power for development for the reason that tracks like “Seeing Eye Dog” and “Modulation” sound like regurgitations from another monotonous release titled Evolve.
Then, in continuation of that mundane string of albums, there are songs like “Minerva,” which DiFranco would not even consider as a B-side in the early part of her career. Plus, the spoken word “Parameters” is an ode to self-evolution.
Unlike Educated Guess, this album does have its moments. Other than “Sunday Morning,” “Manhole” is a carefully entwined piece of folk rock fusion.
Somewhere in-between Revelling / Reckoning and So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter DiFranco lost some of the magic and primitiveness and strayed into routine and run-on songs. Knuckle Down is a slightly tweaked Educated Guess.
Lately, the most interesting aspect of DiFranco’s albums has been the packaging, which is the reason why she won the Grammy.

Music: Manhole - Ani DiFranco