Ani DiFranco's strengths have always been her lyrics, voice, and guitar work. On her new record, Educated Guess, she returns to her recording roots, dropping the band which accompanied her for the last several albums. The approach may seem somewhat calculated, as the current singer/songwriter craze is leading many to simplify their recordings, but in Ani's case it is not only efffective but powerful, and is both an homage to and improvement on her earliest works.

The songs, while strong, suffer from off-the-mark engineering (the album was self-recorded on an analog 2" 8-track), including a lot of rough vocal tracking, which hurts the record slightly (Ani's voice is often drowned out a bit by overlayered backing vocal tracks, which left me just wanting to hear her, not ten of her). The guitar is mixed well, however, and (as on all her albums) is impressively intricate while remaining simple and moving.

There are a couple of spoken word tracks, including a speech regarding the difference between voicing dissent and being unpatriotic, which are both compelling and insightful, but extremely out of place; they don't fit the record at all, and would likely have done well being released in a full-length spoken word album. Aside from that, Educated Guess is a collection of heart-felt tracks that fans of her early, solo records will love, and will likely win over several of the "band only" fans as well.

-Todd Berry