Alanis Morissette – Flavours Of Engtanglement

• 5th Jul 2008

Alanis Morissette didn’t disappear after the highly acclaimed debut album. But she didn’t really go anywhere either. Return efforts have been not as well received, although never getting truly slammed by the critics, she suffered huge blows only because she didn’t manage to repeat the business or even content of her first album. But even now ‘Jagged Little Pill’ is not heard quite as often as it used to be. Call it over dose at the time, or maybe even due to the fact that the music is now dated. Alanis Morissette has managed minor victories here and there, notable cases have been her contributions to the films of Kevin Smith with songs that stoof out enough to keep her recognised (not to mention appear in the films as God as well).

She is also lucky enough to be an artist that is just instantly likeable and will retain a huge fanbase for a long time to come. So even if every effort from then till the end of her career doesn’t quite grab the media in a frenzy she doesn’t have too much to worry about.

The opening of her new album will strike two chords. One – that her voice has not changed in any shape or form. It is stll the exact same singing voice – heaving in accent, and sometimes toyed with for the sake of chorus. But also that as with more recent music, she is stll interested in infusing her music with a lot of eastern influences. It’s a fairly stalled start to what has been mouthed as a big comeback. The song doesn’t quite know how to open the album so it goes for the quite/loud quiet/loud routine.

Following a similar pattern, but much more confidently is ‘Underneath.’ The chorus does reek of the kind of music you’d expect over the opening credits of a teenage Canadian TV show. And not a new show at that! But it is a decent enough attention grabber and probably the reason why it was chosen as a single.

So far what seems to be missing is any effort to progress forwards, a week electronic third song makes any effort to sound a bit more modern cringeable. You’d wonder whose ideas these all were, and if the four year gap between albums would have been longer if it weren’t for some hip and savvy producer who pulled her out of the woods with the idea that now was the time for her to make her big return. But with three rather poor efforts for songs opening the album it induces a heavy sense of depression. But even more depressing is that a truly wonderfully opened ‘Versions of Violence’ where she does actually do something different and gives us what seems like the first truly original Alanis Morissette song in years is utterly raped by the studio when the ‘TYPICAL’ morissette chorus hits. It doesn’t say much for the artist or her production team when every song is enginnered exactly the same way as the one before. And the over kill of editing her natural sound out and into that ‘Morissette’ chorus voice we are all familiar with is what kills any chance this album or comeback had of standing out.