Album: Ani DiFranco, Which Side are You On? (Righteous Babe)

A first new album in three years by this most steamingly righteous babe.

And as is appropriate to Grammy winners, it comes with guests on the running-boards: Ivan and Cyril Neville, Pete Seeger, Anais Mitchell... And if the small, smeary DiFranco voice is not in itself a particularly lucid instrument, it does makes for a clear signature (hence that gong). Sound? A loose-limbed, spacious, American indie-folk-rock. Political, challenging, dissatisfied and, naturally, righteous.