Alanis Morissette - Feminist pop storms the charts

Canadian Alanis Nadine Morissette emerged on the alternative rock scene in the late Nineties thanks to the energy of her songs and the intensity of her lyrics, always sharp and sincere, largely devoted to the light and shade of relationships between men and women. A body of work that showcased her explosive personality, poised somewhere between the most aggressive Tori Amos and the most introverted Suzanne Vega.

Alanis Morissette was born on June 1, 1974, in Ottawa, Canada. Her parents were teachers at military schools, a profession that took the Morissette family moving around the world. Young Alanis spent part of her childhood in Germany before returning to Ottawa at the age of six. She already had one goal in mind: to play the piano. At just ten years old she made her precocious entrance into show business, landing a part on the children's TV show "You Can't Do That On Television." The show also brought her a co-starring role alongside Matt Le Blanc (Joey from "Friends") in a film. With the money she earned, Alanis was able to fulfill her dream of recording a record. It was only a 7-inch single, but to press it she founded her own record label, Lamor Records. The two hundred copies of "Fate Stay With Me" nonetheless revealed the incredible grit of a twelve-year-old who already seemed like a rock star. So, at just fourteen, Alanis found herself signed to MCA, and in just four months, from September to December 1990, she recorded her debut album, released in April 1991 to modest success in Canada. Launched by the single "Too Hot," Alanis is a collection of pop-dance songs that went platinum in Canada and earned Morissette a Canadian Grammy for Best New Artist. It was followed by Now Is The Time (1992), which revealed her as a disciple of Madonna.

Having moved to Los Angeles, Morissette teamed up with a leading producer, Glen Ballard, and a band made up of members of rock groups (such as Dave Navarro and Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers). In 1995 she broke through with the single "You Oughta Know," a tough, cutting track with lines about sex delivered in blunt terms. Her raw talent caught the attention of Madonna, who signed her to her own label, Maverick, releasing the album Jagged Little Pill, the record that made her a star.

The album quickly topped the charts around the world. The credit goes to songs bursting with energy, in which she plays a rebellious young woman grappling with overbearing, disloyal men. That's the case with "Head Over Feet," carried by a catchy melody and sudden shifts in tone, and "Ironic," where the alternation of moods becomes even tighter and the chorus even more gripping. Morissette plays the part of a teenager perpetually torn between aching melancholy and bursts of anger. As in "You Oughta Know," which follows exactly this arc, moving from the tones of a delicate ballad to those of a furious tirade. The shuffle of "Hand In My Pocket," meanwhile, echoes the style of a classy rocker like Chrissie Hynde. The arrangements, handled by Ballard, make heavy use of keyboards and guitars that provide a counterpoint to Morissette's crystalline, harmonious vocals.

At the height of her fame, the Canadian singer-songwriter even played God in Kevin Smith's film "Dogma": a God who doesn't speak and skips around like a little girl. Almost a paradoxical portrait of this prodigy-girl with boundless energy, capable of digging into the deepest recesses of the soul with the naive impetuousness of a teenager.

Overwhelmed by her own fame, Morissette fled to India with her mother, returning with the good intentions of someone determined to change the world. The following album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998), however, failed to repeat the miracle. Neither the Indian sonorities of the mystical "Thank U" nor the Middle Eastern flavors of the seductive "The Couch" are enough to dispel the impression that this is merely a pale copy of the successes of Jagged Little Pill. In 1999 Alanis Morissette recorded the live album Mtv Unplugged, on which she also performs covers of other artists, including the Police's "King Of Pain." Meanwhile, the Ottawa-born singer-songwriter picked up numerous awards, including a Grammy, and in the summer of '99 joined Tori Amos for a five-week tour across America.

In 2002 a new album came out, Under Rug Swept, in which Morissette once again explores the theme of love and the difficult relationships with men. "The lyrics," the Canadian singer-songwriter explains, "are a transposition of my way of dealing with romantic relationships. I've had interesting, complicated experiences that didn't work out. But there are other kinds of men out there, and I'll get the chance to meet them in the future..." The album features varied sonorities, from the rock of "21 Things I Want In A Lover" and "Narcissus," to the rhythmic groove of "So Unsexy" and "You Owe Me Nothing In Return," to the ballads "Flinch" and "That Particular Time." Songs linked by the common thread of love and self-analysis, both inward-looking and focused on relationships, in which Morissette brings out the truths swept under the rug, as the album's telling title suggests: "When I write I have to put on a helmet, because writing a new record is like drinking a truth serum and baring myself completely." Social themes also surface, as in "Utopia," a song that paints an ideal picture of a free society made up of free individuals. "I wrote it nine months before September 11th, contrary to what many people think," she clarified. "But I released it after the New York tragedy. That event shook everyone, triggering an awakening whose effects we'll see in the future and which will also benefit art: everyone has started forming their own opinion on God, religion, politics. And that's reflected in the art people create too."

Ten years after her dazzling (second) debut, Morissette tries to reinvigorate her music with So-Called Chaos, which marks a return to the pursuit of the catchy melody, but fails across the board. The sound has regressed to the wall of nothing typical of Oasis, and the songs never find the spontaneity they're aiming for. "Everything," the first single, is the only track that truly lives up to the word, and it only shines thanks to the blandness of everything else. The lack of ideas is glaring, as shown by the opener, "Eight Easy Steps," basically an outtake from Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie updated with a contemporary sound (pointless noise seasoned with a mystical aura) — the same goes for "Knees On My Bees" and the title track. "Doth I Protest Too Much," one of the better moments, is a barely decent ballad, while, despite its ten opening seconds of strings, "Not All Me" ranks among her worst songs ever. Only in the final three tracks (among which "This Grudge" finally shines, modeled on the piano-driven moments of Under Rug Swept) is there a bit of fresh air (though not that much). Even the lyrics show that there's little left to say, now that the anger toward men, the mood swings and the raw emotion of her early years have faded, replaced almost entirely by a calm acceptance of how things are. Morissette seems to have exhausted her search (both musically and poetically), ending up as a flat copy of herself.

2005 is a year of reckoning and celebration (chiefly marking the tenth anniversary of the bestseller Jagged Little Pill, which gets completely re-recorded in acoustic form): her first compilation, titled The Collection, is released, and it turns out to be not a predictable run-through of hits but an essential anthology for anyone who, over the years, hadn't managed to track down tracks recorded for soundtracks (there's "Uninvited", from the film "City Of Angels", as well as "Still", taken from "Dogma", but the tracklist also makes room for her eccentric cover of "Let's Do It, Let's Fall In Love" recorded for "De-Lovely", Irvin Winkler's film with Kevin Kline as Cole Porter) or that aren't part of her official albums (such as the touching "Mercy" with Salif Keita, which opens Jonathan Elias's "The Prayer Cycle", and her reworking of Seal's "Crazy", which became the anthology's lead single).

Her return to the scene in 2008 with Flavors Of Entanglement turns out to be, all things considered, a small step forward from So Called Chaos, which had put even her most diehard fans to the test. Alanis Morissette has officially set off on her own very personal path and, for better or worse, seems determined to follow it faithfully to the end. After all, it was humanly impossible – and certainly unsustainable – to keep up the levels of genuine rage that made Jagged Little Pill's fortune, drawing the media attention of half the world (and the fits of a notoriously jealous Courtney Love); today's Alanis is a mature woman who knows how to do her job with professionalism, and uses the song as a medium to extract and make sense of the thousand thoughts crowding her famously hyperactive mind.

Seeking out new stylistic forms doesn't seem to be exactly top of her list of priorities; so it wouldn't be out of place to add – alongside the adjective "genuine", which still sets her apart – the word "monotonous" too. All the classic hallmarks of her by-now well-tested songwriting remain constant: solidly built songs with regular structures, airy and catchy melodies that are actually very carefully crafted, effective choruses always elevated by that clear voice recognizable among a thousand others, and of course her trademark lyrics with their convoluted twists, like a therapy session in a Woody Allen film.

This time, however, a bit of innovation comes from the production side. In the studio now is Guy Sigsworth, known to the more attentive as one half of Frou Frou (alongside Imogen Heap), or otherwise as "the man who worked with Bjork, Madonna and Britney Spears". Sigsworth's love of electronics and sonic polish is well known, and the whole of Flavors Of Entanglement bears the clear imprint of these new synthetic gusts of air. In certain passages the contrast is decidedly marked, as in the dark, powerful "Version Of Violence", where the guitars are literally steeped in a cold bath of synthesizers, or in the opening track "Citizen Of The Planet", which uses oriental scales climbing over a roaring wall of sound – as in the days of Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie – to create a tense, dramatic piece, complete with synthetic string runs in the finale like a Bollywood soundtrack (it's impossible not to notice here a certain resemblance to Frou Frou's "Psychobabble").

On other tracks, though, the new electronic dress, while evident, stays more measured, as in the acid-pop march seasoned with glitchy noises "Straitjacket", and on the beautiful, sprawling "Tapes", which, with its intense, compelling sonic carpet, earns the title of best track on the record. The piano ballad "Not As We" (released as the second single) is more conventional but still effective. Although produced throughout with a certain flair and the use of electronic textures usually foreign to the Canadian singer-songwriter's sound, the rest of the album takes the well-worn path. The lead single "Underneath" is rather weak, an environmentally-themed pop/rock number that ends up being one of her least effective singles ever, while the various melodic pop songs that make up the body of the record – "Torch", "In Praise Of The Vulnerable Man", "Giggling Again For No Reason" (which opens with almost dance-like synth crackles), "Incomplete" and the monotonous "Moratorium" – add very little to the listening experience.

Anyone who has followed and loved Alanis Morissette over the years will always find at least one melodic passage or thought to connect with on a personal level, because that is her true art: pouring herself – body and soul – into her songs, in search of a spiritual connection with the world, and so it can always happen that, hidden among the lyrics, you find a line that seems written just for you. From a purely musical standpoint, though, listening to Flavors Of Entanglement currently does little more than slightly revive a career that has seemed on standby for some years now.

Another long recording silence will follow, broken by her contribution to the soundtrack of the film "Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time" in 2010 with the track "I Remain", written by Alanis together with Mike Elizondo (the two had already worked together years earlier on "Wunderkind", a track that ended up on the soundtrack of "The Chronicles Of Narnia"). In 2012, however, comes the announcement of some live dates (including in Italy) anticipating the release of Havoc And Bright Lights, an album that also marks the Canadian artist's move to Collective Sounds (distributed by Sony Music) after many years at Madonna's Maverick label.

There are a few elements that predispose one to a positive attitude toward Morissette's seventh studio album. Besides the change of label, there's a collaborator like Joe Chiccarelli, a name that's worked with Frank Zappa (among others), alongside Guy Sigsworth. And yet, anyone hoping to find again the power of the feminist icon of Jagged Little Pill had better brace for a cold shower: Havoc And Bright Lights is a bright, perfect metaphor for boredom. Disappointment arrives immediately with the single, "Guardian", shamelessly radio-friendly: a rock/pop number melancholically stuck in the Nineties, lacking ideas and inspiration, but overstuffed with bland, vague electronics, with verses stitching together choruses in a standardized song form, with no emotional thread, no crescendo, no depth. Sinking instead into the shallowness of "Woman Down", attention already starts to wane, and it becomes hard to tell one track from another. The syrupy ballad "'Til You" piles it on further, and not even the easy rock of "Empathy" manages to wake the listener up and save the album.

"This record, as always, is a snapshot of the things that obsess me, that matter to me and that get me up at four in the morning: my most introspective moments." So says the American singer-songwriter of her latest work. Indeed, it's the lyrics that constitute the only flash of light in these twelve songs, which draw connections between the microcosm of intimacy and the macrocosm of politics and society, and which recover some ground compared to previous works. The happiest line is: "⟦Q1⟧", which winks at easily recognizable figures from the world of popular music. Too bad it's sung in "Celebrity", a track whose contrived, pretentious dark colors aren't enough to break free from the general sense of muted incompleteness that characterizes the whole of Havoc And Bright Lights.

In short, if the music is predictable, what remains in Alanis Morissette's art is her identity as a whole, intelligent woman, who sings and holds the stage pleasantly, with delightful humility.

A full eight years of silence go by, and Alanis Morissette returns with Such Pretty Forks In The Road. Today Alanis Morissette is no longer the twenty-something of her early days but a mature forty-six-year-old with a life full of contradictions, who, despite various attempts, has never managed to repeat the stunning miracle of 1995. The Canadian singer-songwriter tries to play the same cards again, baring herself once more, moving from troubled teenager to anxious middle-class mother, addressing personal themes updated to her age such as postpartum depression, alcoholism, and mother-child relationships.

There's no doubt that tracks like "Smiling" aim for a Nineties sound, with a voice still worthy of praise, a suffering attempt to smile despite everything. Others, like the hit "Reasons I Drink", become fascinating psychoanalysis sessions, as well as – in this case – the only track that partially departs from the usual Morissette-style pop. For the rest, there are plenty of melodic, sugary ballads, sometimes cloying, sometimes pleasant, confirming Alanis as something of an anomaly in the mainstream world, though certainly not tracks destined to change the world of pop music.

Contributions by Ciro Frattini ("So Called Chaos"), Alessandro Liccardo ("The Collection"), Damiano Pandolfini ("Flavors Of Entanglement"), Rossella De Falco ("Havoc And Bright Lights"), Valerio D'Onofrio ("Such Pretty Forks In The Road")

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