Double album released in 2001 by Ani DiFranco on her record label, Righteous Babe Records (as release RBR024). The first disc is called revelling and the second reckoning (thus the title revelling/reckoning). Contains 29 new songs, quite a few of which she had already been playing on the tour prior to the album's release. The album is a lot slower and jazzy (and depressing at some points) than most of her previous releases and some fans complained that it was too different from her folk rock style of a few years prior or that the songs sounded too similar. Most of the songs are much more personal than political but there are still political themes to be clearly heard. I, personally, find most of the album to be quite enjoyable and recommend listening to it in its entirety all the way through to get the most out of it (though that's probably true for any good album).

Ani DiFranco, of course, handled vocals, guitars, occasionally other instruments as well, wrote all the songs, and was the album's producer (as usual). Revelling/Reckoning was recorded at the Dust Bowl in Buffalo, New York and The Congress House in Austin, Texas. Though the same people didn't always play the same instruments on each song (on some, everything was done solely by Ani DiFranco), the album liner notes list the band as:

Each disc has a distinct feel and there are two separate booklets for each within the album's case. There are also currently two sets of two posters each for sale corresponding with the two discs of this album. According to Ani DiFranco:

"It's not really a 'double album,' because it's not one thing that was too long for a disk, but it's not two separate things, of course. The albums are really distinct in their nature, and the process of my 'new release' becoming two records [went like this:] At first I thought I was just making a [single] record, and there were certain songs that I couldn't reconcile with other songs, there was just material that was so disparate; I had this idea that I wanted to make an album that flowed, and I couldn't [accomplish that with a single disc]."1

Track list:

Revelling

"...when I originally conceived of it, the Revelling record, I thought it was gonna be more revelling, you could dance all the way through it, but it just didn't turn out to be that kind of year. So the first record, Revelling, it's a real wide span of musical contexts that I exist in. There's everything from solo guitar and voice to instrumental pieces of music that I constructed by myself playing all the instruments, and then there's band recordings, live in studio, the vibe of the band playing together, realizing certain songs, and then there's me the spoken-word Little Poet Girl, with musical weather that exists around and within the landscape of the poem. ...some of the tracks on Revelling are just about how much I love to play the guitar, and some of them are about ideas, and some of them are about grooves. I think the most true sense that 'revelling' has really issued forth from this first record, for me, is just revelling in the act of playing music..."1

  1. ain't that the way (5:11)
  2. o.k. (2:51)
  3. garden of simple (3:54)
  4. tamburitza lingua (5:07)
  5. marrow (5:19)
  6. heartbreak even (3:36)
  7. harvest (1:04)
  8. kazoointoit (3:48)
  9. whatall is nice (4:36)
  10. what how when where (why who) (5:55)
  11. fierce flawless (5:02)
  12. rock paper scissors (6:00)
  13. beautiful night (6:24)

Reckoning

"The Reckoning record is much more song-oriented, much more idea-oriented, and it's much slower and much quieter. It's kinda slow and quiet all the way through, which is kind of a new thing for me. There's a lot more 'reckoning': with myself, with my society. It's much more idea-oriented from beginning to end. But there's also solo guitar interludes between songs, and bridges between songs that I've never done before, so there is purely the act of making music on that record, also."1

  1. your next bold move (5:46)
  2. this box contains (0:29)
  3. reckoning (6:02)
  4. so what (5:03)
  5. prison prism (1:34)
  6. imagine that (4:00)
  7. flood waters (0:47)
  8. grey (5:09)
  9. subdivision (3:57)
  10. old old song (4:22)
  11. sick of me (5:21)
  12. don't nobody know (1:17)
  13. school night (4:54)
  14. that was my love (1:03)
  15. revelling (5:08)
  16. in here (4:15)

1http://www.righteousbabe.com/news/interview.html