Alanis Morissette and Emmylou Harris both search their souls and deliver discs that deal with pain dead-on
Alanis Morissette and Emmylou Harris deliver discs that look despair in the face
By Jeff Miers
Updated: 06/10/08 9:38 AM
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- Alanis Morisette, above, deals with the heartbreak of lost love, while Emmylou Harris’ songs of loss become testaments to the resilience of human spirit.
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There are two ways to deal with the inevitable emotional and existential crises that become a common part of life once you’ve left your twenties.
One leads to dark obsession, narcissism and an inability to get out of your own way. The other grants a wizened serenity tempered by a stoic acceptance of the fact that even though sometimes life sucks, it’s still better than the other option.
Two new recordings from highly respected songwriters, who also happen to be strong, vibrant women — Alanis Morissette and Emmylou Harris — are released today. Each is a remarkable effort, and they have a common thread: Despair.
For her first new record in four years, tenured alt-rock-pop priestess Morissette has engaged the brilliance of erstwhile Bjork producer Guy Sigsworth. Place that fact in the “plus” column, for “Flavors of Entanglement” is a sonically dense, creative and interesting record. In the “minus” column, place Alanis the lyricist, who sounds so positively heartbroken here one feels almost intrusive listening to the baring of such a battered soul. (Losing her fiance to no less a personage than Scarlett Johansson would do that to a girl.)
This becomes both annoying and old rather quickly and all but derails what should have been Morissette’s finest effort since her watershed debut, “Jagged Little Pill.”
The record gets off to a quite promising start with the faux-raga/ rock of “Citizen of the Planet,” which turns out to be pretty much the only tune on the record not mired in relationship blues. Here, Morissette and Sigsworth get their Zeppelin on, blending Indian percussion, keening strings and big, fat electric guitars in their own quest for “Kashmir,” while the singer delves into a “all men and women are brothers and sisters” vibe.
So far, so good — this is big, bold, drama-rock, and it works.
Much less successful is “Underneath,” which works well enough as standard Alanis fare, all shimmering, heavily processed electric guitars and grandiose pop chorus, the formula the singer perfected from the outset with former producer Glenn Ballard. The problem is the lyric, however, which mixes metaphors with alarming volition.
Try this on for size: “How I’ve spun my wheels with carts before my horses/When shine on the outside springs from the root/Spotlight on these seeds of simpler reasons/This core, born into form, starts in my living-room.”
Huh? That’s a serious poetry-foul, dude.
The electro-goth of “Straightjacket” might be aiming for Nine Inch Nails-style disgust, but comes off like the rantings of a jilted high school girl, set to a mildly cheesy club groove. Things take a turn for the better roughly halfway though the record, when Sigsworth starts going absolutely nuts with the production bells and whistles, turning “Versions of Violence” into a genuinely sinister, frightening slab of Zeppelin-ish rock arabesque. Alanis sounds angry here, which is a hat she wears with much more grace than she does the one marked “self pity.”
The supple ballad “Not As We” is pretty enough, and is clearly meant to provide the thematic center of the album. It’s tough going, though. Alanis sounds like she’d as soon jump off a bridge as get out of bed in the morning, and though she might gain catharsis from such soul-baring, we, the listeners, get none.
Musically, the record never falters from here on in, and we have Sigsworth to thank for that. Alanis, though, remains despondent until the final tune, the elegaic “Incomplete,” during which she embraces a vaguely Eastern philosophy of perseverance — “Ever unfolding, ever expanding, ever adventurous and tortuous . . . but never done,” she sings with what, finally, sounds more like well-earned conviction than sadistic self-flagellation.
Resilience
Emmylou Harris has been around the block a time or two more often than Morissette. Her “All I Intended to Be” is, like Morissette’s “Flavors of Entanglement,” a record concerned with pain. Harris, however, hits much harder and more directly than the younger singer, and not just because she is a far superior songwriter.
This is not an album lamenting a busted love relationship that really only has significance for the people in it. It’s a collection of songs that stare unflinchingly into the face of death, loss, and the inevitability of dissolution. Yes, it’s a bummer. But because Harris writes such convincing, sturdy melodies deeply rooted in the loam of American music, and sings them with such a sublime aura of yearning, they transcend their very subject matter and become testaments to the resilience of the human spirit.
Harris’ best songs — and the strongest compositions she chooses to cover here, from the likes of Patty Griffin, Jude Johnstone, Merle Haggard and Tracy Chapman— work beautifully within the state of wistful regret they conjure. During “Gold,” the narrator laments a failure to live up to the expectations of a lover, without placing blame on anyone but herself.
“How She Could Sing the Wildwood Flower,” co-written with the McGarrigle Sisters, deals with the loss of the one great love, from a male perspective and manages to be highly emotional without stooping to melodrama. “Take That Ride” is delivered in an almost breezy fashion, but is a song about facing death with something resembling dignity.
The characters in Harris’ new songs are straight out of Flannery O’Connor stories. All are broken in one fashion or another, not just the narrator of “Broken Man’s Lament.” All are dealing with some form of loss — via death, abandonment, or plain hard luck. None of these songs sound whiney, however, so thick is the gothic crushed velvet which both surrounds and cushions them. It’s the difference between writing poetry and scribbling in your diary.
This is nominally country music, and most of the songs proceed at somnolent, ballad tempo, with aching vocal harmonies and sparse, layered guitars the only thing to keep the fallen angel vocalizing company.
However, Harris is as unlike her country-pop peers as she is far removed from Morissette’s highly produced, stylized “big rock.” This fact lends to the air of quiet grace and dignity surrounding what is one of Harris’ finest albums to date. It also underscores what is lacking in Morissette’s songs-as-complaints and new-age platitudes.
CD Reviews
Alanis Morissette
Flavors of Entanglement
[Maverick]
Two and a half stars (Out of four)
Emmylou Harris
All That I Intended to Be
[Nonesuch]
Three and a half stars (Out of four)
