Fellow Workers
Following their successful 1996The Past Didn't Go Anywherecollaboration, anticorporate folksinger Ani DiFranco and vagabond historian-storyteller Utah Phillips gather for another rousing round, thoughFellow Workersis a looser, funkier, more acoustic affair than its predecessor. These sessions step lively: the performers burst into seemingly spontaneous applause, cheers, and laughter. Phillips honors civil disobedience, leftist matriarch Mother Jones, and the complex feelings entwined with the promise of a better America. The album's core lies where "The Long Memory"'s soulful organ, bass, and trumpet flow into the powerful "The Silence That Is Me." DiFranco and band provide mellow fingerpicking, shattered beats, hopped-up Wurlitzer, and bass-heavy funk, beautifully complementing Phillips's wry tales and paying homage to the invaluable oral tradition.--Paige La Grone