Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough Jagged Little Pill was swallowed up as though it were just what the doctor ordered, selling more than 40 million copies to date. The sugarcoated pop treatment the disc received helped make the singer’s sometimes vindictive and R-rated modern rock surprisingly palatable. Morissette’s emotional intensity remains a defining characteristic, though her focus is increasingly on emotional and relational growth, as was the case on 2004’s So-Called Chaos. Her recently released Flavors of Entanglement is a different chapter from the same book. On tracks like "Not As We," the now thirty-four-year-old artist explores healthy self-containment and the tentative first steps of change with a light touch that recalls the work of her fellow Canadian artist Sarah McLachlan. Morissette hasn’t undergone a total mellowing, but her more brooding moments and occasional profanity are used as fuel to propel herself toward self-improvement.
Drawing from contemporary techno-pop as well as the dark electronic sound of early ‘80s acts like Eurythmics and Depeche Mode, Morissette forges a mood-based work that depicts the halting and painful process of recovery. The high-tech digital sounds used on tracks like "Tapes" and "Versions of Violence" merge effectively with the lyrical content of these tracks. A malevolent-sounding synthesizer riff gives substance to the emotional abuse and manipulation Morissette rails against on "Violence," while droning tones and a rigid production signify negative self-beliefs that the singer uncovers in the lyrically simplistic "Tapes," which would be less engaging without the added sonic effects.
She pardons herself from unhealthy and burdensome relationships on "Moratorium," but gives equal attention to the anguish of severing ties, no matter how binding, on the honest and revealing "Torch." The proof that she’s benefited from her deep-end psychiatric dives appears on the uncharacteristically positive "In Praise of the Vulnerable Man" and "Giggling Again for No Reason," where she extols the joy of newfound freedoms. ("Oh, this state of ecstasy/ Nothing but road could ever give to me/ This liberty wind in my face/ And I’m giggling again for no reason.")
While her journey is a self-focused one that doesn’t provide a detailed map for interested onlookers, it is a potentially cathartic one that offers glimmers of hope in the occasional spiritual truth that rises from her therapeutic landscape. "Underneath" carries a simple yet intriguing message—that the world is most effectively improved not by outward effort but by individual changes of heart. ("There is no difference in what we’re doing in here/ That doesn’t show up as bigger symptoms out there/ So why spend all our time in dressing our bandages/ When we’ve the ultimate key to the cause right here, our underneath.") "Incomplete" captures the contradictions of reaching for inner peace and spiritual oneness while being bound by our necessarily flawed humanity. ("One day I will be faith-filled/ I’ll be trusting and spacious, authentic and grounded and home/ I have been running so sweaty my whole life urgent for a finish line/ I have been missing the rapture this whole time, of being forever incomplete.")
Its examination of human failure and dysfunction leaves Flavors of Entanglement with some bitter moments. But, provided you find its digital textures appetizing, its aftertaste is one of healthy possibilities.
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