Alanis Morissette untangled again

Sometimes it does not really pay for an artist to come up with a fantastic first album. Alanis Morissette is an excellent example. Her Jagged Little Pill packed such a wallop that everything else that she did after became lackluster imitations. It was not for want of effort. She did release three or four CDs of new materials during the past 10 years or so. Still, and even diehard fans would attest to this, the only times she was worth listening to were when she was milking Jagged Little Pill and hit singles like You Oughta Know, All I Really Want and others for whatever these were worth, with live or acoustic versions.

It has also been said that Morissette’s writing is so personal that she can only sing about things that happened to her and topics she feels strongly about. Jagged was an angry and sexy journal of heartbreak and recriminations performed with total honesty. It was I Will Survive with a rock edge. But success and time and a new love or two dulled the feelings somewhat and left us with a happy, starry-eyed Alanis doing pop albums and singing Cole Porter songs in a movie. The bitter, Jagged Little Pill had turned into a sweet, smooth confection.

So how on earth was she able to get her act together in her new album Flavors of Entanglement, which must be her best since Jagged? It is because she is broken hearted again. I do not know the name of her ex-boyfriend, the one who was responsible for turning her into a smooth-edged pop princess. What I do recall is watching somebody on E News talk about how Alanis lost him to a young and sexy Hollywood actress that could have been Kirsten Dunst or Scarlett Johanssen. And Alanis reacted to this heartbreak in her typical manner. She wrote songs.

The syntax is still uniquely hers, alternately intelligible and amusing. Where she gets her grammar and way of thinking boggles the mind. But every thing else about the recording smacks of the torrential rage that made Jagged Little Pill difficult to ignore. She skirts around the details, but pained and unafraid, she lets all her feelings out. I am someone easy to leave/ even easier to forget, she sings in Tapes and I see every woman who had ever been jilted discover a kindred soul.

Flavors offers themes for every part of a broken relationship. It is like a dialogue with oneself, with all those words you run inside your head in preparation for the time when you would be able to say them to your errant lover. Look at us waging war in our bedroom/ look at us jumping ship in our dialogues, she says in Underneath. This shit’s making me crazy/ the way you nullify what’s in my head comes from Strait Jacket. Coercing or leaving/ shutting down and punishing/ running from rooms/ defending/ withholding/ justifying, are her Versions of Violence.

And after everything else short of witchcraft fails there comes Day one day one start over again/ step one step one/ I’m barely making sense for now, in the lovely ballad Not as We. This segues to acceptance, This is in praise of the vulnerable man/ why don’t you lead the rest of your cavalry home/ this is a thank you for letting me in from In Praise of the Vulnerable Man. This then is usually followed by the never again phase, I declare a moratorium on things relationship, from Moratorium. And down to Torch, where she says, I never dreamed I would have to lay down my torch for you like this, and on to recovery in Giggling Again for No Reason and the summing up in Incomplete, and she goes, One day I’ll be at peace…

These sentiments are framed in what must be Morissette’s most varied collection of melodies and arrangements. With techno, metal and even Middle Eastern turns showing up all over the album, she certainly puts one over Madonna at the Material Girl’s exotic best. Or maybe it is over Evanescence. But whoever it is, it is a fact that Flavors’ richly textured fare makes an apt showcase for the tangled thoughts inhabiting Alanis’ head. These, however, go off tangent more times then they should and the effect can be unsettling. But then this is Morissette. That is what she does best and we wouldn’t want it otherwise.