Pop Music Review : DiFranco a Strikingly Original New Voice

If you haven’t heard of Ani DiFranco yet, you probably will soon, but not through the standard music business hype. The New York-based neo-folkie outright rejects the music industry’s ways. At just 23, she’s already released six albums through her own Righteous Babe Records, and on Sunday at LunaPark she performed a new song that equates record executives with Satan.

Her small following, though, is so intensely evangelical that you’re bound to be cornered by a fan someday at a party who will zealously extol the pixieish singer-songwriter’s virtues. Believe that hype.

In front of an enthusiastic bunch of those fans Sunday, she came off as a strikingly original new voice. Pointed but not confrontational, personally detailed but not confessional, women-oriented by not us-against-them, her songs walk a long bridge between Joni Mitchell and Pearl Jam. Her inventive guitar playing and strong singing likewise flow between delicate and percussively propulsive, with sharp rhythms accented by her accompanist, drummer Andy Stochansky.

While her look--silver nose-ring, blue bandanna over a buzz cut--makes her a central-casting archetype of grunge-folk, her wit and range and giggly asides confounded any easy tag you could have thrown her way. No wonder she wants to stay clear of the major labels--they wouldn’t know what to do with her. But her fans do: Sing her praises, loudly.