Janis Ian Albums (16)
'Unreleased 2: Take No Prisoners'
Release Date 7/31/2006
Tracks 17
Label Rude Girl
See Album Tracklist and Review
'Folk Is the New Black'
Release Date 2/21/2006
Tracks 15
Label Cooking Vinyl
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
A new Janis Ian album with a title like Folk Is the New Black, with all due respect, is not only ridiculous, it's just plain wrong. Ian has been on the militant side of things all her life, so it should come as no surprise, but it's difficult to separate the music from the cultural provocateur. Musically, Folk is one of the best things Ian's recorded, though it still has a host of clunky songs. One suspects she doesn't care; she produces her own sides and releases them herself, and she can do whatever she wants. It's easy to respect that. It's also easy to be drawn to such excellent songs as "The Great Divide," full of tenderness and hope, or heartbreaking stories such as "Jackie Skates," the beautifully stark "Home Is in the Heart," or the humorous Woody Guthrie-inspired "My Autobiography." But there are other songs here that don't cut: the overly sloganeering "Danger Danger," which opens the set, the title track that bookends the album. Nonetheless, Ian fans, used to her humor and rambling manner of writing and recording, will no doubt be excited by this. Everyone else will take what's fine here -- and what is, is exceptional -- and leave the rest. Nonetheless, Ian's place in the folk music pantheon and track record as an artist cannot be disputed, but that doesn't make her sometimes overbearing methods any easier to accept. ~ Thom Jurek, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Decades after their initial burst on the pop scene certain serious artists conjure up special recordings deserving of extra attention. A Jackie DeShannon will deliver something stunning like her wonderful You Know Me disc while Ian Hunter strikes hard with his powerful Rant. Janis Ian takes a more restrained approach, but the result is just as masterful on Billie's Bones, a collection of 13 songs recorded over three days in Nashville at Sound Emporium from June 9-11, 2003. Dolly Parton adds a complementary vocal to "My Tennessee Hills" as Janis takes the listener all over the world -- the beautiful "Paris in Your Eyes" preceding the instrumental "Marching on Glasgow," the poet taking the journey from the Southern states to Amsterdam as well. This is not a "folk" album, the always creative Janis Ian finding different melodies on her guitar giving a distinct flavor to each tune and the bevy of thoughtful lyrics. The title track is inspired by a previous work the artist published in her 1968 book Who Really Cares, Poems by Janis Ian. The lyrics to it open up the 14-page booklet while the original poem closes out the insert. "Billie is my idol, I wander through the desert of her later years," she writes in the earlier version concluding with "Tell them I am ash...and I have no tongue." The song has another perspective for the story: "All these years and all I've learned is just how brilliantly I fail." There is no failure here on this successful light rock collection displaying all sorts of musical elements -- the touch of country in "My Tennessee Hills," a jazz feel on "Matthew," the soft introspection of "Amsterdam." As the great Jimmy Miller put the Blind Faith album together in three days after the supergroup tried for months to record, Ian takes her paint brush and in three days creates an album that contains multiple ideas that entertain as they unravel in a unique and impressive fashion. It is a beautiful and fulfilling disc from her vast repertoire. ~ Joe Viglione, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
It's been many years since she learned the truth "At Seventeen," but the singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist -- who tackles guitars, keyboards, upright bass, and even banjo here -- is still a sharp lyricist who makes her points amid a stylistically diverse playground. Thank God her lyrics don't run as ridiculously stream of consciousness as her liner notes, because part of the fun here is imagining her tongue firmly planted in her cheek as she expounds on various themes. She tackles social paranoia on the bluesy title track; gentle spirituality on "On the Other Side," a tribute to Memphis featuring Mark Twain imagery and Willie Nelson's harmony voca; the powerful pain of love on "When You Love Someone"; and even women's lib on "Plays Like a Girl." That last tune sounds like something you'd hear at the Lilith Fair, a proclamation that girls may be denied membership in certain boys' activities, but the musical boundaries are breaking down. There is a wistful sense of hope on many of the tunes ("The Last Comeback" brims with optimism), but she chooses to close the set with the throbbing, percussive "Murdering Stravinsky," which laments the way people disregard the importance of traditions as they forge ahead. A solid commentary on modern times with a lot of musical joys to be found. ~ Jonathan Widran, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
A Janis Ian dance album? Even her most ardent fans couldn't have seen this one coming. Uncle Wonderful -- an Australia-only album from 1984 that was recorded over three years -- sounds like something from Flashdance or Footloose, and as such it's dated rather badly. Drum machines, synthesizers, and Ian's incongruous grand piano all vie for attention, and the effect is not unlike being caught in a noisy traffic jam for 30-plus minutes. Still, there's some amusement to be gained from hearing Ian sing uncharacteristically coquettish lines like "let me be your body slave," and there's a great, hyperspeed piano solo on "Just a Girl." Ian's writing is as sharp and pointed as ever; Uncle Wonderful initially sounds like throwaway pop, but perseverance reveals that each song is actually a rather dark, well-constructed novella. "Trigger Happy Love" tells the tale of a married prostitute-killer, "Mechanical Telephone" examines marital dissolution, and the title track addresses incest and abuse, themes Ian would return to with great success on her comeback album Breaking Silence. ~ Charles Donovan, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
The second album of Janis Ian's third career as a recording artist found her singing love songs full of violent imagery and story songs about desperate characters. Opening with "Ready For War," and Ian used metaphors of armed struggle to describe romantic interaction, following with "Take No Prisoners" and later, in "Stolen Fire," depicting infidelity in Promethean terms. And even when she employed more conventional imagery, as in "Take Me Walking in the Rain," the album's catchiest song with its familiar rock & roll chord progression (think "Every Breath You Take," "Billie Jean," and countless others), Ian gave the song a demanding, erotic edge that made love seem less appealing than urgent. "Love," she noted in the album-closing "When Angels Cry," "is a four letter word" (a statement no less powerful for having been made 30 years earlier by Bob Dylan). And so, she added, was hope: In songs like "Davy," "Ruby," and "The Mission," she painted sympathetic portraits of homelessness and prostitution. The effect, when set to her typically restrained, melodic tunes and sung in her precise, sometimes clipped voice, was of a tough, adult worldview. Of course, that was not so far removed from the view Ian had held in the songs she wrote back when she was a teenager. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
'Breaking Silence'
Release Date 6/8/1993
Tracks 12
Label Morgan Creek
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Breaking Silence finds Ian ditching her past waifishness for a confident, mature, contemporary acoustic approach relying mostly on spare guitar and piano textures. Opening with "All Roads to the River" (also recorded by John Mellencamp), Breaking Silence includes among its highlights the Holocaust-survivor tale "Tattoo" and the dramatic half-a cappella, half-syncopated-rocker title track. ~ Roch Parisien, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Janis Ian turned to producer Gary Klein and a backup group of L.A. session aces after the commercial failure of Night Rains, and they gave her the kind of pop-rock album that people like Carly Simon turned out regularly. Despite the liner notes by former New York Times music critic Robert Shelton, little here was distinctive, and when the album failed to restore Ian's commercial fortunes, she retired for the second time at the age of 30. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide
