I love Ani Difranco, I really do. It's because of this love that I buy her albums, regardless of quality. I support her politics and her business practices and so I'm happy to drop thirteen dollars once or twice a year on a dozen or so tracks. I even like the strange folk-funk fusion she's been playing for the past five years or so. However, her newest album, Educated Guess, is Not Good.

It's not bad, either. It's not like it's Fountains of Wayne or whatever shite Clear Channel deems fit to shove into my ears when I'm forced to listen to commercial radio. But it's still Not Good. It's not what we've all come to expect from our favorite little folk singer. The music itself is fine, I suppose. Ani continues in her recent pattern of relying less and less on her guitar, which is unfortunate, because she's a very good guitar player.

The music isn't what's disappointing, though. The lyrics are what's really heartbreaking. Ani is known for writing lyrics that are evocative, clever and heartfelt. The lyrics on Educated Guess, well, they aren't. For example

you keep telling me i'm beautiful
but i feel a little less so each time
your love is so colorful
it flashes like a neon sign
but i finally drove out where
the sky is dark enuf to see stars
and i found i missed no one
just listening to the swishing of distant cars

or maybe

as dolls go i am broken
and you could just let that get us off the hook
but from under the umbrella of the unspoken
i see you giving me that look

She's clunky and she's awkward. Perhaps it's just that sadness doesn't agree with Ani; her best work has come out of a fierce anger tainted by some serious joy. For now, I think maybe she should put on a Cure album and get over it before stepping into the studio again, because as long as the she keeps up the melancholy, I'm going to continue to mourn for the woman who said things like:

i want somebody who can hold my interest
hold it and never let it go
someone who can flatten me with a kiss
that hits like a fist
or a sentence, that stops me like a brick wall