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As Queen of the Independents, Ani DiFranco can pretty much do anything she wants, artistically speaking. But that doesn’t mean she should. Since her 1996 breakthrough “Dilate,” a gut-punch meditation on emotional dependence and betrayals that made her and her company role models of pop self-reliance, DiFranco has seemed a bit unfocused.

Of course, compared to erratic fellow indie icon the Artist, who is a guest on one track here, DiFranco is a beacon of consistency, and indeed “Teeth” (in stores Tuesday) showcases her strengths--the loose, conversational-diary cadence of her vocals, the unwavering commitment to explorations of matters societal and personal, the refusal to be pinned into a genre.

But she jumps around too much. On the title track, an assessment of violence in our culture at the edge of the millennium, she seems to have bitten off more than she can chew and then abandons the topic. “Soft Shoulder,” a strong probe of emotional need, seems merely like a “Dilate” leftover. Similarly, the music skips from the distinctive folk-shuffle of “To the Teeth”--accented by compelling horn touches--to the rockier “Soft Shoulder” and on to atmospheric jazz and even hip-hop on “Swing,” with guest rapper Corey Parker. Nothing by itself casts doubts on DiFranco’s talents, but the album fails to tie them together to push her vision forward.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.