The prolific DiFranco, who opened the year with the excellent Up, Up Up album and played the Powerstation back in January, closes the century with some millennial thoughts.
The title track picks up the idea of fully armed United States schoolkids: "Some boygets the milkfed suburban blues, reaches for the available arsenal and saunters off to make the news ..." And on Hello Birmingham she links racism and the murder of abortion doctors.
There are also a few songs early up which suggest an emotional emptiness in her life: Soft Shoulder, about love letters kept, and Wish I May ("I am losing my love of adventure, I'm losing all respect for me") particularly.
As always, however, DiFranco elevates all these emotions and ideas with canny and tough arrangements, staccato guitars and her idiosyncratic phrasing.
And the guest list is impressive: Maceo Parker from James Brown's bands sits in on sax for Swing (although it turns into an ill-considered rap track featuring Parker's boy Corey) and the Artist Formerly Known as "Who?" adds vocals to Providence.
DiFranco's palette gets bigger as she goes and this - about her 12th in as many years - finds her unrepentantly looking even further than the folk, funk, hip-hop, spoken word and avant-rock which has informed her impressive body of work so far. And she brings some of those colours to bear here: Freakshow is a stabbing speak-sing affair, Going Once has a jazzy-Joni finger-snap lope with trumpet and trombone.
This is a tougher call than some previous outings and perhaps not the best starting point for a rewarding voyage of discovery. But long-time aficionados and those keen to be challenged should confidently snap this up. Tough love and an open heart.
