Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 12/12/05
Label: Warners

Few artists manage to make a perfect album, let alone one which defines an era, changes the face of music and makes them the voice of a generation. For her 30 million selling debut, "Jagged Little Pill", Alanis Morissette can claim all of the above. Not only was it a phenomenal album of instant anthems, its bitter rage recast women in music - akin to a rock bra burning - made angry the new cool, catharsis a buzz word and introduced an uptight generation, male and female alike, to the joyous release of wailing like a psycho-bunny-boiler. Arguably, for that one album, Morissette deserves to be revered as one of the most important artists of the '90s.

Not that you'd recognise her as such from this best of. In fact, anyone coming to "The Collection" cold, using it as an introduction to the Canadian rock banshee, might be forgiven for wondering what all the fuss was about. Far from a potent, arresting force of nature, they'd discover a slightly muddled, rather cuddly lady with strange pronunciation and a not unpleasant voice, delivering an eclectic selection of sing-along grunge, Indian spiritualism and Cole Porter - see her splendidly chirpy cover of "Let's Fall In Love" from the film "De-Lovely".

In some respects, "The Collection" is a true and fair account of Morissette's career. It's an even handed assessment, taking care to give equal weight to all four of her albums and her various side projects. Yet the result is a curiously distorted perspective on her history. As the story of what Alanis did next, it's hard to argue with.

After getting her issues off her chest and beaten music around the head with the emotional baggage, she grew-up into a capable, intelligent singer-songwriter and considerably more stable person. She wrote touching songs ("Simple Together"), soft rock anthems ("8 Easy Steps") and occasionally hit deep-thinking, emotional and catchy brilliance, ("Thank You", "Hands Clean").

What's missing, is any sense of just what a monumental album "Jagged Little Pill" was. Apart from the seething funk of "You Ought To Know", there's precious little in the way of the hair-tearing frustration or the unabashed wallowing. Out of context, "Head Over Feet", "Ironic", "Hand In My Pocket" and "You Learn" are reasonably chipper tunes, not the sarcastic, jaded sneers they once were.

Short of including the whole of her debut, with all the tracks together, in their original order, any best of was going to be a diluted, half measure. Ultimately, "The Collection" succeeds in its goal of proving there was more to Alanis Morissette than one corking album. Yet strangely, in doing so, it does her career a grave injustice.

    by Dan Gennoe