[image-4]Published June 19, 2008.
Alanis Morissette
Flavors of Entanglement
(MAVERICK)
Anyone comparing Flavors of Entanglement to Jagged Little Pill hasn’t listened to either. Where JLP raged—at boys, god, record execs— FOE resonates with the wisdom and level head 13 years can bring. Those eager to exploit Alanis Morissette’s tabloid breakup are extolling Entanglement’s “return to form” but she’s always been this good. Like all of her albums, it’s overproduced (Guy Sigsworth, helmer of Björk’s Homogenic, co-writes) and packed with full sentences and light spiritual references (the Bollywood groove of “Citizen of the Planet” calls back to Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie). But the whack of breakup songs are not angry—they’re sad, fond, nostalgic and wistful. “In Praise of the Vulnerable Man” and “Torch” have only kind things to say. The gorgeous ballad “Not As We,” which could’ve gone the full orchestra route of “Uninvited,” instead keeps it a voice-piano duet that falls into—and therefore hits as hard as—“Your House.” The best track, “Tapes,” finds Morissette backed by pounded piano and drum machine, scraping along rock bottom: “I’m too exhausting to be loved/a volatile chemical.” When she finally gets furious, on “Straitjacket”—“I don’t know who you’re talking to with such fucking disrespect”—it’s aimed at a Svengali type, but it’s not far off to assume she’s rightfully asking the world at large.
—Tara Thorne
categories: Coast pick,Canadian artist
This article appears in Jun 19-25, 2008.