Flavors of Entanglement
Alanis Morissette (2008)
Flavorful Compilation
By Kiki Tan

I have to come out clean: I liked Jagged Little Pill, but even if it’s her first foray in the music scene, I don’t think it’s the greatest from Alanis Morissette, the original chick with angst.  I tend to go for the follow-up piece, Under Rug Swept.  This is a subjective statement, obviously, since I can identify more with So Unsexy (I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful / So unloved for someone so fine / I can feel so boring for someone so interesting…) than with Hand in My Pocket, and with You Owe Me Nothing in Return than with Head Over Feet.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the greatness of Jagged Little Pill (Ironic remains a piece of pop rock music that every pop rock lover must have – whether they like it or not – simply because of its, well, greatness); it is, I stress, a matter of taste that I prefer Under Rug Swept.

Having said this, this is why Canadian singer-songwriter Morissette’s seventh studio album, Flavors of Entanglement (produced by Guy Sigsworth), works for me.

Released just this May (a month later than the original international release intended), the album is, as Morissette herself said (and quoted in Wikipedia.org), full of a "nice cross-section" of "joy and levity" similar to what was featured on So-Called Chaos (2004), and the "kind of rock bottom, 'Holy shit, I am a broken woman moment!” Even more matured, even as it remains personal, the songs here merge political awareness with personal convictions – “Our emotions align themselves with larger symptomatic things in the world.  We face a large war out there, but (the album) more closely reflects the war in peoples' living rooms... the icy silence at home, versus the big cold war,” Morissette says.

It helps, of course, that the album is more “modern,” so to speak, than Morissette’s earlier albums – e.g. there are more technological aspects to it, a reflection of Morissette’s self-confessed love for dancing.  Thus, the album is, admittedly, a “combination of everything,” fusing hip-hop beats and organic instruments, among others.  Moving with time is what Morissette did here.

When Robert Diament of the band Temposhark reviewed the album in a blog (arjanwrites.com), he described the Flavors of Entanglement as a career highlight."  In the same way that Madonna's Ray of Light with William Orbit delivered us a new perspective of Madonna, (Sigsworth and Morissette's) meeting of minds produced a fresh, classy, gutsy and uplifting masterpiece that will stand the test of time.”