Alanis Morissette Flavors of entangelment Music
by Alanis Morissette

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UnknownApr 2010

Though she's giggling again, she can't turn off the "Tapes" in her head that fill her with inaccurate, unfair self-appraisals ("`I am someone easy to leave/Even easier to forget'/A voice, if inaccurate") that continue to foster her insecurities. Nevertheless, on the disc's hearty conclusion, the bittersweet, rousing "Incomplete," she proudly owns her flaws and the humanity they underscore with a new outlook on life:

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About this Music

The first studio album from Alanis
Morissette since 2004, Flavors Of
Entanglement fuses the organic and
the techno prompted by producer Guy
Sigsworth (Madonna, Björk). Incorporating
beats, loops and synthesizers,
the album was designed, says Morissette,
so listeners can dance your face
off. Balancing introspective confession
and delirious joy, the global and the
personal, Flavors Of Entanglement is
a tasty new musical feast from one of
pop's most intriguing artists.

Though the mainstream might have all but abandoned Alanis Morrissette since her mid-90s breakthrough as the MTV grunge generation’s Madonna, she has forged on with a handful of albums of a reasonably steely consistency, although even kindly ears would recognize her output since Jagged Little Pill as reduced strength versions of that celebrated album. Its slightly convoluted follow up, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, remains her most intriguing if long-winded work, and with her most recent record (2004’s So Called Chaos) more or less finding peace with itself--filing down the angsty internal dialogues and sounding almost content even at its loudest points--the future seemed to be heading on a downward spiral. But talk about an about turn. With Flavours Of Entanglement the bronco is very much bucking once more, often causing whiplash-inducing stylistic swerves. "Citizen Of The Planet" opens the album, erupting out of eastern strings and a sequenced underlay with blunt, compressed guitars and thumping beats, sweeping through desolate plains previously inhabited by nu metal fantasists Evanescence. The dark tension is upheld through the robotic techno of "Straightjacket" and dark string-laden drum ‘n’ bass of "Moratorium." Landing amid the lonely Tori Amos balladry of "Not As We," Texas-pop of "In Praise Of The Vulnerable Man," and the more typical Alanis fare of "Underneath," this is an often unsettlingly mixed bag achieving varying levels of success, but it is also probably her most emotionally satisfying work for a decade. -- James Berry