The latest entry to Ani DiFranco’s body of work maintains the sound and atmosphere she has been perfecting for the last decade.

Her guitar playing still has the dark tones and her pick-and-strum technique. Her voice has that little girl timbre combined with a conspiratorial aura to it.

Bassist Todd Sickafoose still integrates his phrasing and lines between DiFranco’s unique rhythms.

If one must classify this record, it would be as a folk record with jazz and rock elements, yet she adds loops and electronics to it without calling attention to such effects.

This makes for a more integrated record; it sounds more whole and organic. What makes this record different is the songs. They have more mysterious aura. They come at the listener subtly and insinuate their hooks more slowly. Notes and phrases fade in and out, rarely striking hard. When in “Careless Words” she sings, “I’m no longer here,” the music reflects in her ghostly delivery.

In her liner notes, Difranco says that she mixed this record in her headphones late at night while her household slept, and it has a post-midnight sound. At times, Jenny Schneinman’s violin almost creaks and Ivan Neville’s Wurlitzer sounds like a house settling. Even hard-hitting drummer Terence Higgins uses more coloring in his drumming, including great tambourine work on “Genie” and “Yeah Yr Right.”

In all, Allergic to Water is a great balance between DiFranco working off what is inherent and familiar in her music while expanding the parameters of it.