We were all a little worried about Alanis Morissette when she filmed the video for "Thank U" in the nude and sang tranquilly, "How about no longer being masochistic?"
This was all wrong. The Alanis we knew and loved was wholly masochistic and anything but tranquil. She snarled and screeched, lashing out and drawing blood, barking lines like, "I'm like Estella / I like to reel it in and then spit it out."
The catty howls of "Jagged Little Pill" entranced critics and took over the radio, making Morissette the first female super rock star. She had her predecessors, her Janis Joplins and Sinéad O'Connors, but Morissette's success put her in a class all her own. The media was so unprepared for it that they didn't know how to pin her, but they'd be damned if they didn't try. Rolling Stone ran a cover story with big block letters: "Angry White Female." That seemed to about cover it.
That was all wrong, too. The pigeonholing effectively boxed Morissette in, shackling her to a role that encouraged misinterpretation of her intensely personal music and eventually sent her into flight, fleeing to India to reclaim herself.
Few people bought into the reconnected, purified Morissette that returned with the honeyed reflections of "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie," which spawned "Thank U." Contentment, Morissette learned, doesn't broadcast from the radio as well as disillusionment.
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"Under Rug Swept" attempts to bridge the gap between "Jagged Little Pill" and "Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie." More musically accessible than the latter, softer around the edges than the former, "Under Rug Swept" purports that rearranging the Morissette schtick will result in something unique, much like its awkwardly worded title.
The finished product contains some fine songs, but without the needle-in-the-side, uncomfortable immediacy of "Jagged Little Pill," still Morissette's best release. She channels the wild-eyed banshee of her past only nonchalantly, as on "Hands Clean," the deceptively meek first single.
Here Morissette calmly recollects a sexual relationship with a music executive as a teenager, slyly from his perspective, but so matter-of-factly that you barely notice the insidious, provocative subject matter.
Apparently, after someone informed her of the actual definition of "ironic," Morissette decided to dump the wonderfully selective metaphors that made her lyricism so compelling.
No longer do lines like "I don't want to be your glass of single malt whiskey hidden in the bottom drawer" pepper the lyric sheet. Instead, we get "I embrace you for your faith in the face of adversarial forces that I represent."
But like Sinéad O'Connor, who is not given enough credit as an influence, Morissette is skilled at delivering wordy, unwieldy lines with grace. Her voice, whether in nasal cries or mellow drips, promotes the songs better than the subtle production, which Morissette undertook completely herself.
The haunting, piano-based ballad, "That Particular Time," benefits from the hurt evident in Morissette's voice, as does the shuffling epic "Flinch," where she asks plaintively, "What are you, my god? / You touch me like you're my god." When she concludes, "Soon I'll grow up and I won't even flinch at your name," any person who has loved might flinch in recognition.
The strength of "Under Rug Swept" is in that possibility for recognition. The absolute fearlessness of "Jagged Little Pill" is represented here in Morissette's willingness to lay bare unbearable emotional upheaval. She's equally brave and needy, as "So Unsexy" testifies: "I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful / So unloved for someone so fine."
At times, the content of "Under Rug Swept" feels like just a little too much information, a little too much of Morissette's self-contemplation. Perhaps, you muse, she should turn around the spearing of a self-absorbed ratfink in "Narcissus" and take a good hard look at herself. As the final song demonstrates, after all, Morissette's idea of "Utopia" is a place where "We'd gather around all in a room" and "divulge and open and reach out and speak up."
If it seems like utopia should be a more expansive place than Oprah's waiting room, "Under Rug Swept" is probably not for you.
Those already in tune with Morissette's neuroses, however, will love it.
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