The avenging banshee who sang "You Oughta Know" in 1995, complete with its boast about going down on her ex in a theater, has mellowed on Under Rug Swept, though she's still busting taboos. The album title comes from lyrics in its
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lead single, "Hands Clean," an apparently matter-of-fact reminiscence of underage sex with a music-business mentor, an affair "under rug swept." As if to insist it's autobiographical, the song's video clip shows Morissette being groomed for her early stardom in Canada as a big-haired teeny-pop doll. Verses taking the man's role urge her to "overlook this supposed crime"; in the chorus, she announces, "I have honored your request for silence." Until now, that is. (How long is that statute of limitations, anyway?)
With Under Rug Swept, Morissette is mentor-free. After the two multiplatinum studio albums she made with Glen Ballard as producer and songwriting collaborator, Morissette wrote and produced the new album on her own. Sonically, she has learned all she needs. The music is brawny and meticulous, a further refinement of the tracks she created with Ballard on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie. She concocts folk rock driven by hip-hop beats, ballads that build without getting gooey and hard rock aswirl with psychedelia.
The keyboards and acoustic guitars sparkle; electric guitars jab hard-rock chords and seethe with distortion. Most of all, Morissette understands her voice as both emollient and irritant. She makes it quiver delicately with nervousness and seesaw between vulnerability and resolve. She uses her nasal edge to slice up a self-absorbed guy in "Narcissus," then comes up with the perfect whine, multiplied in an overdubbed chorus, as she wonders, "Why, why, do I try to change you?"
While she applies her musical skills to songs about love, they don't exactly add up to love songs. After "21 Things," the album examines romantic calamities: the little rejections that cause her to feel "So Unsexy," the ex-boyfriend who can still make her "Flinch." Then come successes: the reluctant guy who overcomes his misgivings in "Surrendering," a promise of unconditional love in "You Owe Me Nothing in Return." The album concludes with a wistful, waltzing vision of a perfectly understanding world, "Utopia," in which Morissette becomes an airy Celtic choir.
The need, the obstacles, the compassion, the happy ending -- this is the structure of self-help books and talk shows, and unfortunately it seems that Morissette h
