Ani DiFranco’s So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter, the long awaited follow up to the best-selling Living In Clip, is a live, double CD set including three previously unrecorded songs and twenty more from every phase of a career spanning almost two decades, over fourteen studio recordings, and four Grammy nominations.
Recorded with her six-piece improvisational band- which has since separated- while touring the United States and Canada, Ani calls this “a feral collection of set list standards and a few anomalies,” which cannot be heard in this form anywhere else. It introduces “Welcome to:” and “Shrug,” while transforming older songs, such as “Gratitude” and “You Had Time,” which have been infused with jazz and funk through the use of keyboards, assorted horns, bass, and drums.
Called “a folksinger of ingenuity and vision- both expansive and intimately engaged” by the San Francisco Chronicle, Ani combines courageous risk-taking and a creative voice to comment on the sociopolitical state of the world.
Disc one’s somber “Grey,” she asks: “What kind of paradise am I looking for?” Disc two, subtitled “Girls Singing Night,” contains the song/poem “Self-Evident.” This, one of her most discussed works, is a tribute to the circumstances surrounding the day when “America fell to its knees” and “the whole world turned just to watch It fall” along with “3,000 some poems disguised as people on an almost too perfect day.”
Here, she attacks the propaganda spread by the media and articulates tales of narrowly averted disasters, while toasting those who provide a women with a choice and ridiculing our current president.
These and other songs of sobering reflection mingle with celebratory melodies, such as “To the Teeth” – the antiwar song that sweetly warns: “We’re going to die of old age.” Combining poetic funk with jazzy melodies reminiscent of Henry Mancini, So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter offers its listeners a look at DiFranco’s spontaneity, humor, and unflinching intensity in the face of such topics as politics, rape, abortion, and, of course, love.
It is a powerfully intimate and uninhibited look into her private thoughts and very public points of view. The fact that this is a live album lends a feeling of familiarity even to those of us who have never had the opportunity to sit down to listen to her before due to either lack of interest or limited air play.
Proclaimed as “one of the most creative and gifted lyricists in contemporary rock music” by the Phoenix New Times, she has recently played with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Indigo Girls, Arlo Guthrie, and Utah Philips and has been covered by artists ranging from Dave Matthews to Chuck D. Ani DiFranco’s music has never been for the faint of heart, the closed minded, or even the conservative.
The raw emotion and brutal honesty of her words is sometimes overwhelming, but never disappointing. She is best known as a feminist rocker with an audience as distinctive as her cause, but this set of live performances can convert even the most skeptical listener.
She proclaims in the explosive opening track, “Swan dive,” “they can call me crazy… and they can call me brilliant if I succeed.” I do not have to recommend So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter fans of Ani DiFranco, but I do think that anyone with a love of words who believes in freely flowing ideas will appreciate this album.
Its cool, jazzy tones can either softly play as background music or relieve stress as they gush from speakers as you “dance out of tune.”
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