Holding roughly two hours of music, "So Much Shouting/So Much Laughter" is a compilation of live performances taped between 2000 and 2002. The album is comprised of two discs: "Stray Cats" (named for street kittens that listened outside a venue in Raleigh and for the tracks themselves which have "followed you home") and "Girls Singing Night" (coined during an on-album exchange and owing to the "femininity" of the songs on this disc).
Those who have followed Difranco's musical evolution will be interested to hear the live and solidified efforts of the six-piece band used to record "Revelling/Reckoning" (released in April 2001). The indie-folk-rock-funk-punk (what do we even call her anymore?) superhero's last release was the effort of an older, more mature musician.
The emphasis on arrangement (and the use of additional instruments) has added to Difranco's skillful guitar playing and enthusiastic voice to create a new sound/style that seems to have taken a permanent hold. Fans of "Revelling/Reckoning" will appreciate the evolution of songs now holding places next to "set-list standards" that have been well re-interpreted since Difranco's last live album, "Living in Clip," released five years ago.
"It's an example of how songs are living things; the same song, like the same person, is a very different thing after five years. Or after five minutes, it seems sometimes," says Difranco in a press release.
The album certainly has some lovely moments. The piano in "Rock Paper Scissors" weaves between accompaniment and jazzy dominance, and the vocal breakdown that comes at the end of the song is a welcomed addition. "32 Flavors" is reinterpreted as funk with a new drumbeat, horns and keyboard. DiFranco's backing band skillfully executes "WhatHowWhenWhere," while her guitar and voice alone carry the majority of "To The Teeth." If each album she has released is a self-portrait, "So Much Shouting/So Much Laughter" is a book of these paintings-and each of them appear somewhere, in a song or in a passing comment.
The question is not whether this new release is indicative of Difranco's skill, potential or concept. Rather, the question is whether you are standing on a soap-box and laughing with Difranco at the state of the world, or you think she might be kidding. "Self-Evident," a song/poem written post-Sept. 11 and set to the "music" of guitar feedback (and eventually with the band) is an apparent example of this phenomenon. It is elsewhere, also: in the transition to "Tamburitza Lingua" at the end of "Letter to a John," in "My IQ." This question is a game. And if we accept this as a game we like to play, if we are fully aware that this makes us terrible, if we admit that we are sick, sick people- then we can ask the following question easily: Ani Difranco, are you ever kidding? What is it in Difranco's music that inspires us to ask this? It is not her approach: she is well-thought and well-spoken-she describes with a few twisted words what others are unable to say in many. No, it is the extent to which she takes herself seriously. Set to guitar-feedback and spoken with an emphatic voice, her words cannot be ignored.
But, oh, they can be labeled. And, if we really want, we can label the whole style as pseudo-intellectual crap. But it's psuedo-intellectual crap with a heart. Her honesty enables her to be a contestant in our game, but this same honesty makes her music worthwhile. Despite her silliness, we know she won't lie to us. We can hear in her voice the rawness of her thoughts; we know if they are coming from her stomach, her fingertips, or the back of her throat. The album is honest. Instruments are not tuned properly. Sound equipment and levels function strangely. There are missed entrances. Rhythm is not precise. These songs and these renditions are honest. Each song answered yes to the songwriter's question: "Is the spirit here?"
And the spirit is there. Does this make the album a success? Yes. But does it distinguish itself as a "stand alone" in the Ani Difranco library (of over 15 albums)? Ultimately, it proves to be an album for fans with hungry ears that will appreciate the subtlety of difference in rendition.
If it were an album for other listeners, it would be an EP. You can't swim in it and, even if you could, it's not the right temperature anyway. It takes too much effort to wade through and monitor its heat and too much time is spent trying to mix in new parts of cold to balance what is already there.