Alanis Morissette won over angst -ridden teens everywhere in ’95 with her United States debut, Jagged Little Pill. However, that butt-kicking girl seemed to vanish inside the contentment of her sophomore album-Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. Inner peace is nice, but it doesn’t rock.
Morissette rediscovers her edginess on her latest album, Under Rug Swept, a collection of tunes that aren’t quite jagged, but are certainly sharp.
The sappiness of high self-esteem seeps through on enough tracks, however, to deem parts of the album skip-able.
Under Rug Swept begins cleverly at the top and winds its way down. The first song is arguably the best, “21 Things I Want in a Lover.” It sounds like a fresh cut from Jagged Little Pill, with Morissette’s signature sarcastic wail atop a reverberating guitar.
Her appetite for vengeance, however, seems to have vanished. In its place are wit, sarcasm and confidence.
“21 Things .” is catchy and rollicking from the first note, as Morissette asks her prospective lovers all the right questions. Minus a few random specifications (being anti-capital punishment, for instance), her list is full of universally appealing qualities: “Do you derive joy from diving in/ and seeing that loving someone can actually feel like freedom?”
The second track, “Narcissus,” is more biting than the first, but it still comes nowhere near the spastic angst of Morissette’s famous breakup ballad, “You Oughta Know.” Morissette balances crude defamation with self-realization in the form of refrains that ponder questions like, “Why why do I try to help you/ try to help you/ when you really don’t want me to.”
The first single off the album, “Hands Clean,” is a chart-happy pop song, but the lyrics are not sterile. Pay attention to the story she’s telling and you’ll discover dysfunction and selfishness in the midst of a weird relationship: “You’re essentially an employee/ and I like you having to depend on me.”
Morissette balances her feminine and masculine traits-vocally and lyrically-in a way that most women musicians should envy.
She says what she’s feeling, touches on politics and switches roles throughout Under Rug Swept (on “A Man” she declares “I am a man/ as a man I’ve been told.”). It seems that she’s found the right mixture of old school bitterness and her new self-love.
Tracks like “You Owe Me Nothing in Return” get tedious as Morissette lets her lyrics run rampant over the music.
But this is the exception, not the theme of Under Rug Swept. “So Unsexy” is both catchy and poignant, with lyrics like “I can feel so unsexy/ for someone so beautiful.”
Diagnosis: Alanis is back with some balance. But if you like her extreme vacillations of personality, (the hate queen vs. the peacekeeper), Jagged and Junkie will give you a better fix.
Grade: B
