Unprecedented Sh!t
by Ani DiFranco
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Matt Bouchie
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Kevin Reilly
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Streaming + DownloadPre-order of Unprecedented Sh!t. You get 4 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.Purchasable with gift cardreleases May 17, 2024
$10 USD or more
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Record/Vinyl + Digital AlbumHeavy stock gatefold w/ printed graphics sleeves
Available in either 140g standard weight coke bottle translucent vinyl OR 140g standard weight classic black vinyl
Includes digital pre-order of Unprecedented Sh!t. You get 4 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.digital album releases May 17, 2024item ships out on or around July 8, 2024Purchasable with gift card$25 USD or more
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Compact Disc (CD) + Digital Album4-panel wallet w/ 12-page booklet
Includes digital pre-order of Unprecedented Sh!t. You get 4 tracks now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.digital album releases May 17, 2024item ships out on or around July 8, 2024Purchasable with gift card$15 USD or more
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1. |
Spinning Room
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2. |
Virus
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3. |
More or Less Free
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4. |
Baby Roe
03:06
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i think we might be wrong about all of it
in fact, it’s been proven
keeps coming down to this shitty little interface
that we’re usin
the very edges of our knowing
is just the tiny tip that’s showing
but we’re so wigged out
yeah, we’re so devout
to this waking dream
what’s playing on the screen
and you just never know
do you, baby roe?
it’s all absurd
but even you maintain
timing is everything
when you’re steppin
off a curb
and if you think this life
is your only life
you’re a fool
no, spirit can’t be stopped
no matter who gives birth to who
no, spirit won’t be stopped
no matter who gives birth to who
the path of least suffering
leaves the best trail
the path of least suffering
it don’t matter which side of the veil
it don’t matter which side of the veil
i think we might be wrong about all of it
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5. |
Unprecedented Sh!t
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6. |
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if that nurse don’t get you, then her sister will
with her monday through sunday dispenser of pills
don’t know which of my habits will be my demise
but there’s more ways, everyday, to betray what is wise
it troubles a body
all this hidden pollution
makin some kinda cancer
a foregone conclusion
and deep in my saddlebags
i carry a rage
for the greedy top feeders
and their invisible cage
oh, rise the proletariat
red banners unfurled
let’s mend the failures of history
and the manmade world
let’s mend the failures of the profit system
let’s rewrite the law books
quit following the path of least resistance
cuz that’s what makes the river crooked
let’s evolve into our true nature
so little flowers can bloom
in a world where relationship is sacred
and sacrifice is assumed
all for one and one for all
boom chicka boom boom boom
there’s just too many distractions
too many coming attractions
too many screens fiercely flashing
their subliminal frame
it’s no wonder we all just go along
hungry as we are, just to belong
it’s no wonder we’re all crazy
it’s amazing we’re not all the same
you’re gonna die way too early
or you’re gonna live way too long
it’s kinda like it always was
except the quiet is gone
proving technology gets you nowhere
if your intentions are all wrong
and for clarity of vision
we need a pulsing polarity of vision
it is our singularity of vision
that got us to this place
without equal and opposite forces
we will only ever know a distortion
we will never hit our resonant frequency
we will never find grace
our roots are meant to be interwoven
not churned up and turned upside down
turn off your combustion engine
and listen to the sound
get down off your tractor, mister
and put your nose to the ground
out where the topsoil welcomes a heavy rain
out where the shoreline can handle a hurricane
out where god and nature are the same
a mind can think clear
as far as engines of evolution
cooperation trumps competition
and if i were darwin’s girlfriend
i woulda whispered that in his ear
i think we should have a new bible
one that only has two words
i think we should have a new bible
that just says: mother earth
and i think men should stand down
when women give birth
but if that nurse don’t get you, then her sister will
with her monday through sunday dispenser of pills
don’t know which of my habits will be my demise
but there’s more ways, everyday, to betray what is wise
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7. |
Boots of a Soldier
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8. |
You Forgot to Speak
04:25
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between first sleep and second sleep
i stare into the dark
and i can feel there are two of me
so i put um both on the ark
and we’ll find out what we’re made of
when we’re tossing at sea
and no one knows what their fate is
and there are no guarantees
you know the flood is coming
so you watch the sky for weeks
and you see a bird pass overhead
with something in its beak
and nobody will listen
but then, you forgot to speak
how the hell can anyone listen when you forget to speak?
(it will never be)
you forgot to speak
(it will never be)
you forgot to speak
(it will never be)
hey!
(fair)
between first sleep and second sleep
i stare into the dark
and i can feel there are two of me
so i put um both on the ark
and we’ll find out what we’re made of
when we’re tossing at sea
and no one knows what their fate is
and there are no guarantees
a big picture is just clutter
with no space to hang it in
and there’s only so much justice
in a world of broken men
you gotta wonder, why begin?
let alone, begin again
and tell me,
how the hell can anybody listen when you forget to speak?
(it will never be)
you forgot to speak
(it will never be)
you forgot to speak
(it will never be)
hey!
(fair)
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9. |
The Thing at Hand
04:01
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thanks to the bullfrogs and the crickets and the cicadas
thanks to the loons and the songbirds too
thanks to all my music teachers
and the beauty they exude
they remind me, i don’t need to be anything
i don’t need a look, i don’t need a brand
they remind me, i don’t need to be anything
i don’t need to know what to say
i don’t need to know where i stand
i just need to show up
for the thing at hand
yes, i just need to show up
for the thing at hand
i’m not black or white or grey
i’m not he or she or they
i’m not gay or bi or straight
i’m just me and maybe
that’s just another thing to say
i just wanna show up
for the thing at hand
yeah, i’m just trying to show up
for the thing at hand
thanks to the pine trees in the tall breeze
thanks to the ocean
thanks to the heartbeat and the spring leaves
springing into motion
thanks to the big spinning cosmos and it’s do-see-do
thanks to the emptiness and the energy
that teaches me how to flow
i just wanna show up
for the thing at hand
yes, i’m just trying to show up
for the thing at hand
i defy
being defined
i am not my body
i am not my mind
you can point right at me
and still, there’s nothing there
and whatever you call me
i don’t care
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10. |
Interlude
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11. |
The Knowing
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about
These days, every artist’s album needs to have a story. The music can’t speak for itself.
But after 22 records, why can’t Ani DiFranco’s work speak for itself? Yes, her forthcoming album is shaped by stories — ones about reproductive freedom, the double-edged sword of the pandemic, identity and ever-evolving belief systems that have shaped each of its 11 songs. There are songs that were written in 2011 and in 2022; some for musicals, others for children’s books. The album isn’t linear, but it is inherently teeming with DiFranco’s spirit.
It was paramount to the folk-feminist hero that listeners not be saddled with preconceived notions while diving into her 23rd album Unprecedented Sh!t. “I believe there is a rhyme and a reason as to why these songs have come together in this way now and I want people to experience this album as a journey, a piece of art, without being influenced by a cacophony of surrounding narratives.”
While many of DiFranco’s albums were made more insularly, she’s opened herself up to collaboration in recent years. For 21 of DiFranco’s 22 albums, she opted to self-produce. With Unprecedented Sh!t, she wanted to try working with a producer and tapped BJ Burton, who produced one of her favorite albums, Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. With Burton’s help, largely from afar, they created soundscapes often using only DiFranco’s voice and guitar as the raw materials and manipulating them with effects and filters. “I really wanted to lean into the power of machines in a way that I never have before, so BJ and I communicating through many layers of them in order to collaborate, seemed apropos. This record was made almost entirely by me and BJ alone, bouncing things back and forth.”
The title Unprecedented Sh!t is not only representative of how much of a sonic departure the 11-track album is from Ani’s other work, but also a political and social commentary on the current state of the world. “We find ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level.”
The lead single of Unprecedented Sh!t, “Baby Roe” — an anxious folk number that explodes into an industrial-tinged crescendo — embodies that ethos. Inspired by Joshua Prager’s literary masterpiece The Family Roe: An American Story which digs into the history of how abortion became a strategic tool for the right to gain power, “Baby Roe” widens the lens with which abortion rights are viewed to include an existential awareness of non-duality. Of the song, DiFranco says, “In Prager’s book we meet all the characters involved in Roe V. Wade, including the adult child of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe), born and adopted-off in the course of her mother’s quest for the right to a legal abortion. Baby Roe, unaware of her role in history until she was an adult, remains, nonetheless, in support of a woman’s right to choose. As I would be. Life is much longer than the ego would have us believe. It transcends the body, any individual body, and is infinite in fact. Consciousness need not be born into any specific body at any specific time to be manifesting to its fullest. This is one of the ego’s many illusions.”
The crushing weight of patriarchal systems on the female psyche and the complicity of women in their own oppression are focal points of the psych-folk number “You Forgot to Speak.” “Between first sleep and second sleep / I stare into the dark / and I can feel there are two of me / so I put um both on the ark,” Di Franco sings with a dreamy lilt. “New Bible” is a rallying cry for a new world order centered around DiFranco’s gravelly vocals: “I think we should have a new bible / that just says: mother earth /and I think men should stand down when women give birth.”
On “Virus,” a symphony of sensual jazz, hand-drumming and Nine Inch Nails-style guitar drops, which samples her 1995 classic “32 Flavors,” DiFranco navigates the paradoxical nature of the pandemic, which brought both healing and suffering. “I was given permission to stay home with my family, so it was an incredible gift on that level. It was also a gift to the planet, for our species to shut up and sit down for a minute. Of course, it was also an incredible struggle for humans, full of pain and suffering.” “Spinning Room” visits the related subject of an earth besieged by human pollution and exploitation and seems to come from the voice of nature and the voice of the individual at the same time. Within the world of the song, these voices are presented as one and the same, inseparable.
Against a backdrop of finger-picked guitar, “More or Less Free” explores the dynamic of a friendship with someone who is serving life in prison and how they exist throughout the world. “I never thought that I was special / been that way since we were kids / there’s a million people that are like me / in this world, stuck doin bids.”
Inspired by Ed Yong’s tome about perception An Immense World, DiFranco contemplates the lives her 1960s army boots have lived and explores the concept of subjective realities in “Boots of a Soldier.” “Wherever these boots have been, wherever they walked, now they're on my feet and they're walking my life. If only I could know the story these boots could tell! It boggles the mind, the radically different umwelts playing out around us at any given moment. This animal, this tree, this guitar I am holding, these boots. The multiplicity of perspectives and stories are unfathomable.”
What is at the heart of the album is its final track, “The Knowing,” a tender, existential lullaby that inspired DiFranco’s eponymous 2023 children's book and explores and affirms the importance of selfhood while conveying how the concept can be limiting. In a lot of ways, DiFranco believes if there’s an overarching message to come from her record, it’s in this song; the idea that we can harness the power and value of identity without being limited to it. Identity is a tool perhaps, for understanding and affirming diversity, but beyond that, it is an illusion, and our true nature exists on a level wholly more primary than any of the stories we tell.
But after 22 records, why can’t Ani DiFranco’s work speak for itself? Yes, her forthcoming album is shaped by stories — ones about reproductive freedom, the double-edged sword of the pandemic, identity and ever-evolving belief systems that have shaped each of its 11 songs. There are songs that were written in 2011 and in 2022; some for musicals, others for children’s books. The album isn’t linear, but it is inherently teeming with DiFranco’s spirit.
It was paramount to the folk-feminist hero that listeners not be saddled with preconceived notions while diving into her 23rd album Unprecedented Sh!t. “I believe there is a rhyme and a reason as to why these songs have come together in this way now and I want people to experience this album as a journey, a piece of art, without being influenced by a cacophony of surrounding narratives.”
While many of DiFranco’s albums were made more insularly, she’s opened herself up to collaboration in recent years. For 21 of DiFranco’s 22 albums, she opted to self-produce. With Unprecedented Sh!t, she wanted to try working with a producer and tapped BJ Burton, who produced one of her favorite albums, Bon Iver’s 22, A Million. With Burton’s help, largely from afar, they created soundscapes often using only DiFranco’s voice and guitar as the raw materials and manipulating them with effects and filters. “I really wanted to lean into the power of machines in a way that I never have before, so BJ and I communicating through many layers of them in order to collaborate, seemed apropos. This record was made almost entirely by me and BJ alone, bouncing things back and forth.”
The title Unprecedented Sh!t is not only representative of how much of a sonic departure the 11-track album is from Ani’s other work, but also a political and social commentary on the current state of the world. “We find ourselves in unprecedented times in many ways, faced with unprecedented challenges. So, our responses to them and our discourse around them, need to rise to that level.”
The lead single of Unprecedented Sh!t, “Baby Roe” — an anxious folk number that explodes into an industrial-tinged crescendo — embodies that ethos. Inspired by Joshua Prager’s literary masterpiece The Family Roe: An American Story which digs into the history of how abortion became a strategic tool for the right to gain power, “Baby Roe” widens the lens with which abortion rights are viewed to include an existential awareness of non-duality. Of the song, DiFranco says, “In Prager’s book we meet all the characters involved in Roe V. Wade, including the adult child of Norma McCorvey (aka Jane Roe), born and adopted-off in the course of her mother’s quest for the right to a legal abortion. Baby Roe, unaware of her role in history until she was an adult, remains, nonetheless, in support of a woman’s right to choose. As I would be. Life is much longer than the ego would have us believe. It transcends the body, any individual body, and is infinite in fact. Consciousness need not be born into any specific body at any specific time to be manifesting to its fullest. This is one of the ego’s many illusions.”
The crushing weight of patriarchal systems on the female psyche and the complicity of women in their own oppression are focal points of the psych-folk number “You Forgot to Speak.” “Between first sleep and second sleep / I stare into the dark / and I can feel there are two of me / so I put um both on the ark,” Di Franco sings with a dreamy lilt. “New Bible” is a rallying cry for a new world order centered around DiFranco’s gravelly vocals: “I think we should have a new bible / that just says: mother earth /and I think men should stand down when women give birth.”
On “Virus,” a symphony of sensual jazz, hand-drumming and Nine Inch Nails-style guitar drops, which samples her 1995 classic “32 Flavors,” DiFranco navigates the paradoxical nature of the pandemic, which brought both healing and suffering. “I was given permission to stay home with my family, so it was an incredible gift on that level. It was also a gift to the planet, for our species to shut up and sit down for a minute. Of course, it was also an incredible struggle for humans, full of pain and suffering.” “Spinning Room” visits the related subject of an earth besieged by human pollution and exploitation and seems to come from the voice of nature and the voice of the individual at the same time. Within the world of the song, these voices are presented as one and the same, inseparable.
Against a backdrop of finger-picked guitar, “More or Less Free” explores the dynamic of a friendship with someone who is serving life in prison and how they exist throughout the world. “I never thought that I was special / been that way since we were kids / there’s a million people that are like me / in this world, stuck doin bids.”
Inspired by Ed Yong’s tome about perception An Immense World, DiFranco contemplates the lives her 1960s army boots have lived and explores the concept of subjective realities in “Boots of a Soldier.” “Wherever these boots have been, wherever they walked, now they're on my feet and they're walking my life. If only I could know the story these boots could tell! It boggles the mind, the radically different umwelts playing out around us at any given moment. This animal, this tree, this guitar I am holding, these boots. The multiplicity of perspectives and stories are unfathomable.”
What is at the heart of the album is its final track, “The Knowing,” a tender, existential lullaby that inspired DiFranco’s eponymous 2023 children's book and explores and affirms the importance of selfhood while conveying how the concept can be limiting. In a lot of ways, DiFranco believes if there’s an overarching message to come from her record, it’s in this song; the idea that we can harness the power and value of identity without being limited to it. Identity is a tool perhaps, for understanding and affirming diversity, but beyond that, it is an illusion, and our true nature exists on a level wholly more primary than any of the stories we tell.
credits
releases May 17, 2024
produced and mixed by bj burton
recorded by mike napolitano
played and sung by ani
except
andy stochansky – hand drum on virus
terence higgins – drums on new bible
todd sickafoose – electric piano on new bible
jharis yokley – drums on baby roe
joy clark and lilli lewis – voices on the knowing
all words and music by ani di franco
except the second verse of more or less free by natedogg916
mastered by huntley miller
cover photos by danny clinch
inside photo by ani
sleeve photos by pieta brown
design by regan hagar
thanks to brian joseph, steve dalmer, peter casperson
©2024 righteous babe music/bmi
produced and mixed by bj burton
recorded by mike napolitano
played and sung by ani
except
andy stochansky – hand drum on virus
terence higgins – drums on new bible
todd sickafoose – electric piano on new bible
jharis yokley – drums on baby roe
joy clark and lilli lewis – voices on the knowing
all words and music by ani di franco
except the second verse of more or less free by natedogg916
mastered by huntley miller
cover photos by danny clinch
inside photo by ani
sleeve photos by pieta brown
design by regan hagar
thanks to brian joseph, steve dalmer, peter casperson
©2024 righteous babe music/bmi
license
all rights reserved
tags
about
Ani DiFranco New Orleans, Louisiana
Grammy winner and feminist icon Ani DiFranco began her career as a proponent of the artist-run label, creating her own Righteous Babe Records in 1990. Since then she has released over twenty studio albums and supported a broad range of social causes including racial justice, reproductive rights, gender equality, environmental issues and prison reform. ... more
discography
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May 2024 -
Feb 2024 -
Jun 2023 -
Jun 2023
contact / help
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