The austere cover image of a half-dead tree from the bombing of Nagasaki serves as a pretty good metaphor for this album--spartan and downbeat. To my ears the music falls somewhere between the simplicity of Knuckle Down and the experimentalism of Educated Guess.

I was a little worried when I learned the songs were recorded and self-produced at her home studios in New Orleans and Buffalo. Her DIY album Educated Guess got a bit out of hand with the odd vocal experiments. But Reprieve is steadier going. The production quality is excellent and she never fails to come up with interesting and varied acoustic guitar tones as well as some cool ambient electronica. And the vocals... well those are still Ani, if a little toned-down. A number of songs are delivered in the plaintive and earnest tones she reserves for her more depressive songs: "Hypnotized" and "Nicotine" are examples. Some are more in the idiosyncratic style she developed on Educated Guess--featuring the occasional strange harmony. But if you're a fan of the truly feisty delivery she is so famous for, you won't find much of it here. She lets loose during the last half of "Decree," perhaps just to remind us she still has it in her, but as a whole that's not what this album is about.

She does include the requisite poetry reading--this time with a whole-tone scale guitar accompaniment that gives an unsettling feeling. It doesn't really work so well, but I'll confess I've always found Ani's poetry reading tedious, in part because of the annoying wigger/beat-poet accent she tends to assume.

[...] I find the CD quite down in spirit overall. It's listenable for sure, but not really what I'm looking for. Ani has had many different periods over her (now lengthy) career; personally I prefer her lively ensemble work on the Reveling/Reckoning and Evolve albums. I'd love to see her go back to working with a great backup band again.

Invariably a looming epitome of political awareness and self-reliance, the very pregnant Ani Difranco is in rare form with her latest studio album "Reprieve." Quite a varied collection, and the first after what has been for her a long absence (the outstanding "Knuckle Down" came out in January 2005), Difranco sounds revitalized and acutely in touch with herself. In each lyric and guitar strum resides a sense of purpose and unquestionable passion.

Romance has never ranked high on Difranco's list of musical agendas, but opening track "Hypnotized" articulates a love story complete with her own wistful, unorthodox style, as she and a handsome stranger suddenly enrapture each other in a country where she does not speak the language. She also nails the feeling of an unhealthy, near-obsessive relationship in "Nicotine," where she cannot help but keep second guessing herself, chiming "you sang that song in my ear, and it tickled those tiny hairs."

The most anthemic moments of the disc, however, are where she wages sharp, articulate criticism on American government and culture, complete with evidence for support. In "Decree," she damns "network yes men" and "the sexed-up strobe of celebrity" for manipulating a vulnerable public, concluding that "the stars are going out, and the stripes are getting bent." In "Millennium Theater," however, she really cuts to the throat of it all.

"Halliburton, Enron/Chief justices for sale/Yucca mountain goddesses/Their tears they form a trail/Trickle down pollution/Patriarchies realign/While the ice caps melt/And New Orleans bides her time."

Further selections glisten and sparkle. Difranco articulates in "Half-Assed" how elusive genuine, unobliterated beauty is, while in "78% H20" she can no longer handle a high maintenance relationship, predicting that the satisfaction will "go from more than ever to not enough in no time." Also, she wisely states in "Unrequited" that if there's one thing she can't understand, "it's the urge to kill something beautiful just to hang it on your wall," while she wistful realizes throughout "In the Margins" just how small she is in the scope of the world.

The most remarkable moment on the disc, however, is the spoken-word title track where she not only foreshadows her then-unknown pregnancy but defends the very essence of what it is to be a woman.

"But when all of nature conspires to make me her glorious whore/It's `cause in my body I hold the secret recipe of precisely what life is for/And the patriarchy that looks to shame me for it is the same one making war."

Difranco is not only a woman, but more of a man than most men will ever be. "Reprieve" is simply the most up-to-date piece of evidence to support that fact.

From the start of "Hypnotized", the opening track on Ani DiFranco's latest album, Reprieve Review: Music: Ani DiFranco: Reprieve, 2006 (Righteous Babe, 2006) you sense an artist slightly out of step and at odds with the world around her, even with those who love her: "I was no picnic / I was no prize / but I had just enough sweetness / to keep you hypnotized." That quote says it all...love Ani or hate her, she's a DIY phenomenon. You have to give her props for doing it the hard way--her own way. She's toured constantly for 16 years, turned out 20 albums (live and studio), 2 DVDs, and 3 EPs, and repeatedly turned down major label deals to run her own label, Righteous Babe.

DiFranco's as famous for her shaved head, pierced and tattooed look as for her anthemic woman-power tunes such as "Gratitude", "Not A Pretty Girl", "Little Plastic Castles", and "The Next Big Thing." She's made a career out of brash, uneven vocals, fast guitar licks, and digs at the existing power structure. As if being pigeon-holed by the music industry, the media, and men in power isn't enough, she also gets put in a box by fans who expect her to be the same old Ani, over and over. (She famously alienated a sizable part of her grassroots following when she married a man.)

DiFranco's look is softer now, and so is this album. Not soft in a wishy-washy way, but the softness of a musician who knows her power and when to hold it in check.

Reprieve is polished and melodic. The album's rhythm amazing, especially when you consider that there are no drums, just Ani's voice, her guitar, and Todd Sickafoose's soulful acoustic bass. (Sickafoose signed on for DiFranco's 2004 second DVD, Trust, as well as her 2005 album, Knuckle Down.)

There are lots of gorgeous moments on this album and lines that stick in your ear long after your CD player turns off. Tracks "78% H20", "Unrequited", and "In The Margins" are heartbreaking with ironic lyrics and an unadorned arrangement that allows the emotional honesty to come through. "Subconscious" examines how past mistakes can put us on a truer path. DiFranco's political and social anger toward corporate and political corruption in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina leaps out aggressively in "Millennium Theater" and "Decree." "A Spade" talks about harmony between the sexes and the end of global war.

Reprieve's most startlingly beautiful moment comes in its title track, a spoken word number about pro-choice, pro-sex feminism: "to split yourself in two / is just the most radical thing you can do / so girl if that...ain't up to you / then you simply are not free." DiFranco goes on to say "feminism ain't about equality / it's about reprieve," and this album is a welcome one.

Ani DiFranco comes around for her second album of 2006 (after the "Carnegie Hall" live album earlier this year), ever prolific as she is. Many of her albums have a musical twist to it (solo acoustic, or full band, or in concert, etc.), and with "Reprieve" Ani goes full Joni Mitchell "Blue" mode, with great results.

On "Reprieve" (13 tracks, 47 min.), Ani is musically accompanied primarily by an acoutic/fretless stand-up bass and the atmosphere is of an intimate setting in which Ani sings about her current worries of the day, albeit with slightly lesser political overtones than on many of her other albums. It's hard to point out "highlights" as such, as the songs flow pretty much from one into another, and it's not like there are "hits" on this collection. But my own personal favorite tracks include "Subconscious", "Decree", and "Millenium Theatre". I couldn't help but think back of Joni Mitchell's "Blue" album when hearing this one.

Ani DiFranco's output is amazing. Not counting live albums, this is her 15th studio album in 17 years. In this day and age, when a lot of artists take 2, 3, 4 years between albums, Ani keeps at it. And the amazing thing is that, more often than not, she delivers quality, even in all the quantity. "Reprieve" will not be the most important or most successful album of the year, but it certainly stands in its own right.

Let's face it Ani Difranco is definetly an aquired taste musically. Most people are put off by her "women lib rants", her "quirky cartoon vocalizations", or her "hyper-caffeinated guitar strumming". If your a fan of folk or even singer songwriter fare you owe yourself a deep listen into her prolific body of work. Being somewhat familiar with her body of work I was immediately put back by the somberness of this album but after repeated listens this album really grew on me. This album is really reflective and really can't be appreciated in a more upbeat state of mind. This album is like a warm cup of coffee being cradled and sipped by someone living in cold dreary storm-drenched cabin in the pacific northwest. Given that example you should listen in the right atmosphere:perhaps a long lonely drive somewhere or a housecleaning session in solitude. I think you get the vibe now...

Anyways the album sounds like what an Ani Difranco trip-hop album might sound like but with the emphasis on more live instrumentation. The atmosphere is heavy and very visual. The lyrics and the ambient textures jump out at you at the cue of her voice. It's really not your standard album as much as it is more like a soundtrack for poems.

"Inside the margins" is probably one the most touching songs she's done maybe since "joyful girl" as it celebrates the splendor of life and the bewilderment of forgetting it. "Hypnotize" is probably one of the more clever songs about relationships that I've heard in a while; where she questions how her and someone else manage to stay together saying"maybe I had just enough pathos to keep you hypnotized..."

All in all I think this is great album sonically and lyrically and deserves several listens. This nothing like other Ani records and isn't really trying to throw bunch a hooks at you. Also the fact that it is somber makes it work because Ani's reserved delivery really lets the material shine musically and lyrically. I don't think Ani is mellowing out or loosing her bite because subtlety wasn't really ever her strong suit but on this album she is definetly developing it. I think she's on her way to making a really interesting album if she could fuse both of these elements....!!!!!!!!