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Ani DiFranco: Trust - Live at the 9:30 Club. Washington, DCDirector: Danny Clinch Rating: E two hours (approx) Righteous Babe/Shock Riding on the back of her back-to-basics album 'Educated Guess' grass-roots legend Ani DiFranco has finally released a live DVD. Gone is her backing band, with only double-bass player Todd Sickafoose surviving the cull. In theory a visual document of a more intimate and raw DiFranco is an enticing prospect. Theory and practice are very different animals though. Somewhere along way this full-length concert has managed to make the "chipper, cheerful free-for-all" a little distant and impenetrable. The mistake director Danny Clinch makes is to concentrate on incidentals; his eroded super8 footage of Washington environs and stop-motion animations just get in the way of the main attraction. Several songs begin with green-room noodlings that hard cut into full live versions. This device (while initially powerful) quickly becomes formulaic, disrupting the concert's flow. Furthermore, regular intercutting of hypnotised audience members and badly lit, ill focused, and jolty hand-held camera work eats away at the potency and poetry of DiFranco's stunning songs. I've been to enough concerts where I can't see properly; I don't need that sensation in my lounge room. It's not all Clinch's fault though. DiFranco somehow looks careworn. She's a little loose with her phrasing at times and is plagued by guitar strings that don't much like each other. Her country-flavoured ode to forgiveness Angry Anymore is just plain out of tune, turning what would and should be highlight into something far more teeth-grating. Don't get me wrong: I think Ani DiFranco is just about the bestest, most excellentest thing to grace this good earth. She is an astonishing woman, equal parts virtuoso troubadour and brave political agitator. Frankly, she would still play and holler until she broke every string and then still continue on a capella. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of DiFranco knows this, but this live DVD shows little of that vitality. That said, there is excellence embedded into the 20 tracks. Fans will also enjoy renditions of some of her newest and (until recently) unreleased work nuzzled between her early songs. Worth a special mention is the crackling Phase, the off-kilter Swan Dive and the wondrous classic Little Plastic Castle. Overall though I found it unnecessarily hard to sink into the world of this diminutive giant of independent music and independent thought. If you listen to any one of DiFranco's numerous albums you will (if you are a responsible human) be forever infected by her radiance. It should therefore be a no-brainer to capture some of that brilliance with pictures; 'Trust' however just misses the mark.  |
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