CD Odyssey Disc 1518: Alanis Morissette

I’ve mostly broken my bad habit of buying albums for purely historical interest or completionism. Mostly.

Disc 1518 is….  Alanis

Artist: Alanis Morrisette

Year of Release: 1991

What’s up with the Cover? Alanis’ Giant Head. It looks like she’s holding her head up with one arm or maybe she’s voguing, as was the fashion at the time.

How I Came To Know It: I knew a single off this album from seeing the videos on MuchMusic but never considered buying the record. However, last month local record store Lyle’s was going out of business and had a 50% off sale. This record is hard to find, and I decided to buy it on a whim for…purely historical interest.

How It Stacks Up: I have two Alanis Morrisette albums. Of the two, this one is a distant second.

Ratings: 1 star

Let’s not mince words; this is not a good record. And while honour compels me to explain just why I think this, I do not plan to be excessively cruel on this review. Instead, I’ll start by noting that Alanis Morrisette was 16 years old when she recorded it. When I was 16 my biggest claim to fame was winning a high school trophy for best drama student. While I was doing that, Alanis was winning a Juno and selling 100,000+ copies of her debut record. While I don’t usually go in for biographical context, I think that bears saying.

OK, back to the ‘honour compels me’ part of the experience. This record is painful on multiple fronts. Let’s start with this genre, which I think is late eighties/early nineties dance pop. This form of music doesn’t lend itself to excellence to begin with, and here I found it unfavourably reminiscent of bad Paula Abdul (i.e. all of it) or most backing tracks played at fashion shows. Put simply, this is not my jam.

For one thing, the production of this era is atrocious, and this album is a poster child for the problems typical of the age. The drum machine is artificial, but not in that vibrant and urgent way that New Wave manages. It just feels cheap, and emotionless, like it was produced on a Casio in someone’s basement. And like an old dog won’t hunt, the thin bass won’t thump. The whole thing feels tinny.

There are some passable melodies buried in here, but they are buried deep. It is too bad because just going full pop would’ve helped, but with all the excess dance-track stuff going on, everything gets lost in a jumble. There are horns, strange synth sounds and on “Walk Away” a sample of some guy saying, “we gonna do a song that you never heard before.” After my first listen, I kept desperately hoping it would be true.

Alanis’ vocals are good although – again – unfortunately submerged in the pea soup of an over-taxed mixing board. Her vibrato delivery that would be so compelling a few years later on “Jagged Little Pill” is here, and it maddens me, because I love that vibrato, and this record gives it short shrift. Her ability to sing heartfelt emotional content is one of her strengths as an artist, but the artificiality of this record never gives her a chance.

There is one song (“On My Own”) where the Soulless Record Execs let her get ‘natural’ but a lot of that track is her straining to sing in a smooth pop style that does her no favours. It feels like they are trying to take the dynamic brilliance of her vocals and shove it into a square hole. It just doesn’t fit. Let Alanis be Alanis, SREs!

Lyrically, I never expect a lot from dance music, but as modern bands like Confidence Man demonstrate, you can have clever lyrics without giving away anything on the “danceable” front. I don’t mind that a lot of these songs are from the perspective of a teenage girl; that’s who Alanis is at this point. I do object to strained rhymes and imagery that feels jumbled together to serve the rhyme.

This includes the hit single “Never Too Hot” which is an undeniable earworm, but just what…

“Always too hot, never too cold
You make your best shot too hot to hold
Never too young, never too old
You gotta go for gold”

…is all about, I have no idea. I’m going to go out on a limb and say “not every much”. That said, when this song came on at the club back in 1991 there is a good chance I got up and danced to it. It is cheesy as hell, but it is danceable, and decades later if you quote a line from that chorus at people, they’ll quote the next line back at you. This damned dance song may be vacuous but it gets in your head and stays there, which is the main mission of most dance music.

So kudos for that, Ms. Morissette, but you’re still just getting the one star. That and the Juno.

Best tracks: Feel Your Love, Never Too Hot

CD Odyssey Disc 732: Alanis Morissette

I’m just back from watching “Avengers: Age of Ultron” at the theatre. I rarely go to the movies anymore, mostly because I find all the talkers annoying, but I try to never miss a Marvel superhero movie.

I grew up with Marvel and the Avengers was my favourite comic series. Getting to see them come to life on the big screen is a big deal for the kid in me. Hell, the adult in my thinks it is pretty nifty too.  

Disc 732 is…. Jagged Little Pill

Artist: Alanis Morissette

Year of Release: 1995

What’s up with the Cover? In the foreground a lipsticked Alanis turns her head skyward – behold she is grass, she is nature. Behind a professionally styled Alanis looks contemplative despite the fact that the sun appears to have gone supernova and is obliterating the back of her head with its brightness.

How I Came To Know It: In 1995 I was 25 years old and did not live in a cave. I therefore knew this album, which was so huge that if you know someone over 40, and that person has more than 100 CDs, this is probably one of them – or was at one time before they went digital.

How It Stacks Up:  Alanis has eight studio albums, but this is the only one I’ve got, so I can’t stack it up. One does not make a stack.

Ratings: 3 stars but almost 4

“Jagged Little Pill” is a solid record; never too hot, never too cold. However, in 1995 it was considerably more than that – it felt like the soundtrack to the confusion swirling in the head of every twenty-something in North America.

The record straddles the worlds of pop and rock, making it friendly for radio, but with enough of an edge that you can feel appropriately rebellious in liking it. It is a smart combination from a woman who had started her career as a pop starlet and was determined to reinvent herself.

The first couple of songs seem determined to establish her rock credentials, with the grungy “All I Really Want” and the famously nasty “You Oughta Know.” “You Oughta Know” was an instant break-up anthem. With provocative lyrics like “Does she go down on you in a theatre?” and “Every time I scratch my nails down someone else’s back/I hope you feel it” it is probably number two all-time in sheer vitriol. First place still goes to Marianne Faithfull’s “Why’d ya do it?”

Morissette’s singing is a little flat throughout, but her delivery is heartfelt and her distinctive rasp and ability to stay in the pocket make up for it. The imperfections in her delivery actually make it sound better.

The lyrics are solid for the most part, but they spoke to me a lot more deeply when I was 25. Now they can feel a little too much like a creative writing class assignment at times. Also, the song “Ironic” is full of stuff (rain on your wedding day, good advice you didn’t take, etc.) that just isn’t ironic. That is annoying.

This is an honest album, though, and that honesty shines through. Morissette has something to say, and she says it well. “Right Through You” is a solid indictment of the music industry that sought to pre-package her image in previous years and is now being called out. “Head Over Feet” isn’t my favourite song, but it has a genuine sweetness to it that shows Morissette’s vulnerability on an album where she mostly works hard at being tough. I appreciated that she took a song to basically admit to it.

When I first heard this album, I couldn’t get enough of it, and I would have reviewed it much more positively back then. Like a lot of people I played it to the point of over-playing it, and as a result it has sat fairly neglected on my CD shelf for a lot of years. It was nice to rediscover it. It was like running into an old flame. Nice to catch up in the supermarket lineup, and even if the passion isn’t there anymore, you are still reminded about why you liked her.

Best tracks: All I Really Want, You Oughta Know, Hand in My Pocket, Right Through You