Diana Anaid

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During Diana Anaid's hiatus from making records, she read spiritual books, looked after her dying father and bonded with her son. So if you're expecting some sappy New Age drooling about how good life is on her self-titled fourth album (out April 2010), you've caught the wrong train. As the new sinewy strumming single "Cynical On Waking" makes obvious, the earthgirl brat from Byron Bay has not shed the folk-punk attack of her first album over a decade ago.
The album has even more pissed-off moments. Opening track "Make Me Change My Name" rails at her father's absence during her teen days. Lines as "The drugs and the sex that you fed to me. Made me old too soon/ So I buried myself in music" are as compelling as they are disturbing.
Over ten years ago, some dude told Anaid she didn't have what it took to make it in music. On each of her albums, she has penned at least one song to kick him in the bollocks with. This album is no different. We're never sure, though, it's him, or some other miscreant in the line of fire, as she spits with ill-concealed malevolence, lines like "This mess you left for me" and "what about 'friends forever?'".
But it's not all days of whine and neuroses. "Diana Anaid" is her most radio-friendly, particularly on the poignant harmony-shrouded "Black Rainbow" and melodic "Peace". Her strength always has been providing a voice to the tongue-tied and the truly disenchanted members of the 'illing. The anthemic "Nothing Special", for instance, strikes a chord when she advices, "Don't worry about the things that they say/ You can't please everyone all the time anyway." On the singalong "Get Your Freak On" she scolds gently, "You missed a million opportunities/ I'm overcoming insecurities." Her awkward love songs ("the tension in me is because of you", "The riot you made in me") make sense to people who are by nature awkward about love -and about love songs.
Anaid's well-documented childhood poverty and alienation continues to fuel her anguish and revenge. But she has developed as a tunesmith, as a communicator and as a confessor. Her voice has never been more expressive. This is her most "balanced" record to date. Or, maybe you're drawn into her world because she's learned new ways to piss off the people she wants to piss off, and new ways to embrace the people whom she wants to embrace.
_ CHRISTIE ELIEZER, Pollstar magazine