And so, Avril has grown up? Well, if anything, she now looks younger than she did when "Complicated" took over the airwaves two years ago. Go figure.
Where before we had pop hooks, Busted buzzsaw guitars and boyfriends with skateboards and insensitivity, we now have a stronger, more confident Avril - forthright in her determination not to lose her cherry on "Don’t Tell Me", which coyly spells ‘ass’ with an ‘a’ and two asterixes on the CD booklet, bitterly writing songs about doomed relationships. Well, it’s not easy to meet the boy of your dreams in a first class cabin of an executive tour jet you know.
"He Wasn’t" maintains this theme with a dashing, Clash-style chorus that chastises this young man for not opening doors. Jeez, young women these days - one minute they’re wearing stack-heeled DMs and fairy queen ra-ra skirts and the next they give you hell for not acting like your dad.
Of course, Avril Lavigne’s trump card has always been her ability to sing a good ballad. When called upon - "How Does It Feel" - the girl can use those tiny lungs to great effect. She knows when to croon and when to yell and teenage girls, shut in their bedrooms and pissed off with their parents the world over must be thankful for that.
Avril is apparently ‘picky’ about her sound. So picky in fact that she doesn’t let her band play on her albums. Only would-be guitar god, Evan Taubenfeld, gets a sniff of the studio and that’s because he co-wrote three songs. To be fair, sonically the album sounds great - Evanescence meets Alanis Morrissette - and with three different producers featuring Pearl Jam, Linkin Park and Our Lady Peace on their CVs, that’s no mean feat.
By the time we get to the dark dirge of "Forgotten", we’re left to wonder if this is just one guy’s bunny that Avril’s boiling or if the stadium towns of North America are littered with Lavigne exes, proudly wearing Canadian eyeliner on chains around their necks claiming to be THE Skaterboi. Come on girl, lighten up. Does Canadian pop really need its own PJ Harvey?
Eventally, "Who Knows" sees a happier poppet - again co-written with Avril’s new buddy, singer Chantal Kreviazuk (a great hand at Scrabble) - all brand new days, laughter, power chords and hope. Phew. But here come those hormones again on "Fall To Pieces", with its cute chorus and
understated, but amazing, vocal. The girl really can sing.
Elsewhere, the touching ballad, "Slipped Away", dedicated to Avril’s dead Grandpa, perhaps takes us a little too close for comfort to some real emotion in Avril’s life - “I’ve had my wake up, won’t you wake up.” The closing, tongue-in-cheek, "I Always Get What I Want", sees our heroine reborn as a diva, ordering flunkies to obey her every command as a punk rock guitar slams through a pre-historically rehashed riff for all its worth. All told, great fun.
So, we have a maturing Ms Lavigne, distancing herself from the teen antics of her "Let Go" debut, but struggling to find any stories worth telling save for boyfriend trouble and dead grandparents. Nick Cave’s perfect woman, surely.
