Alanis Morissette - So Called Chaos
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Alanis MorissetteEdition: Music CD
Audio: German (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
CD Release Date: 2004-05-18
Music Label: Maverick
Product features:
- MORISSETTE ALANIS SO-CALLED CHAOS
- Eight Easy Steps
- Out Is Through
- Excuses
- Doth I Protest Too Much
- Knees Of My Bees
- Not All Me
- So-Called Chaos
- This Grudge
- Spineless
- Everything
Free Music Notes for So Called Chaos
Free Music Review: The latest stop on an endless journey of self-revelation
Hit: 5 Stars
Alanis Morissette's career has gone in a direction few expected. Though her debut album certainly contained some positive and playful songs, it was anger and confrontation that made Alanis the best selling female singer of 1995. You Oughta Know, a song where she talks about sexual acts in theaters, hurls a spiteful four-letter word, and alludes to a death wish for her former boyfriend, is probably her most famous song. I think most of us were expecting her follow-up albums to be just as confrontational, angry, and accusatory. Yet every album since Jagged Little Pill has Alanis pointing the finger at herself, saying that she is the cause of her own pain. It's a surprising thing coming from a woman who once said that she hopes her ex-boyfriend feels it every time she scratches her nails down someone else's back.
At first listen, So-Called Chaos didn't resonate with me very much. I thought the lyrics to Eight Easy Steps were an amusing send-up of some of the quackery of the self-help movement, books that promise to make you a millionaire in three months, or that promise enlightenment in a week, etc., but I felt relatively indifferent to the rest of the album. So many of the songs seemed so intimate, almost like diary entries, that I felt almost like I shouldn't be listening to them. I wondered why Alanis even put out such deeply personal material. It makes me think of a comment one critic made of Anais Nin's published diaries, "The world cannot stand such nakedness."
It wasn't until a recent car trip from Oregon to California that I "got" some of the songs on this album. It was a trip I had been putting off for years, and that I thought I'd be putting off for many more. A trip to see a relative I had not seen since I was an infant.
Driving down I-5 in my wonderfully clean 2005 rental car, passing through the beautiful Shasta region, the pristine deep green forest all around, the clean and fresh air, the crystalline Shasta lake beside the car, the sky above clear and blue, I was panic stricken. This was a trip I just could not afford, the distance (over 800 miles one way) was too great, I feared I wouldn't have enough energy to stay awake for the 12-hour one-way drive, and I feared the relative who awaited me might even have mixed emotions about seeing me. Maybe it was all a mistake after all.
At that moment, the song "Excuses" came on the sound system.
I'm too far from home
It takes far too much energy
I cannot afford to
No one will ever see me
These excuses, how they've served me so well
They've kept me safe
They've kept me stuck
They've kept me locked in my own cell
"Excuses" became the instant anthem of my trip. The excuses we use, the excuses I've used, in order to keep myself from coping with situations that may be challenging but that when faced will result in greater wisdom and perspective. Like many people, I have gone through life trying to make a little cocoon for myself, ways of sheltering myself from the more difficult situations in the world, and ironically the cocoons themselves often became threatening. As Alanis says, they keep us in our cell.
As it turns out, the California trip was incredibly positive, life-changing even. The only regret I have is that I didn't make it sooner.
In the course of writing this review, something occurred to me. Earlier I said that I wonder why Alanis reveals so much about herself in her songs. Isn't it ironic that this is a question I often ask of myself regarding my reviews? I often think I put far too much personal information into my reviews, and I wonder why. It has occurred to me that Alanis and I have one thing in common that may be related to this public airing of experiences: we grew up in show business. We spent our entire childhoods and teen years having our identities defined by other people, having our images manipulated, and then projected out to an audience. For children and teenagers, who in the most usual of circumstances are usually angst-ridden in regard to establishing their identities, being in show business can be very dangerous. (How many child stars end up deeply troubled people?) Alanis has sung about having felt exploited and objectified as a child and young adult in show business ("Hands Clean," "Perfect," "Right Through You"). It is most likely very healing for her to finally control the context within which her image is projected out into the world. This may be one reason that she continues to project her image at all. Perhaps she is tired of the years of objectification. Now are the years of personalization. She is compensating for her years of powerlessness.
I now see that Jagged Little Pill was not the quintessential moment of Alanis' career and not the defining moment of her life. It was but a snapshot of that moment in her life, a life that is a continual journey of self-revelation. So-Called Chaos is the most recent snapshot.
Andrew Michael Parodi
ADDENDUM (7/29/05): I just wanted to comment on the Official Amazon "Editorial Review" at the top of the page. The reviewer apparently missed that "Doth I Protest Too Much" is a tongue-in-cheek song, and therefore it is NOT evidence of a Zen-like serenity in Alanis. "Doth I Protest Too Much" is a reference to Shakespeare's play Hamlet wherein we find the line, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." To protest too much is to insist so strongly about something not being true that people begin to suspect maybe it is true. When Alanis says she doesn't worry about every pair of legs her boyfriend looks at, what she is really saying is that she really DOES worry about every pair of legs he looks at -- but she wants to hide that fact from her boyfriend. The whole song is about Alanis trying to hide from others how insecure she feels in this particular relationship.
So Called Chaos Poster
Tracks: Eight Easy Steps 2:52 / Out Is Through 3:52 / Excuses 3:32 / Doth I Protest Too Much 4:03 / Knees Of My Bees 3:41 / So-Called Chaos 5:03 / Not All Me 3:58 / This Grudge 5:07 / Spineless 4:15 / Everything 4:36 / Eight Easy Steps [Live] / Excuses [Live] / This Grudge [Acoustic] / Making Of So-Called ChaosIt's been a long time in coming, but with So Called Chaos Alanis Morisette has finally produced a worthy follow up to her globe-conquering debut. Calmer and more focused, the songs exude a new, mature woman, firmly in control of her life. "I'm not threatened by every pair of legs you watch go by," she sings with Zen-like serenity on "I Doth Protest Too Much" (as if she'd have said that on Jagged Little Pill). Time mellows--leave the angst to Avril Lavigne.
Overexposure once made her fantastic voice grate, but now it's like welcoming back an old friend--that distinctive little warble, that softness?it's her most valuable asset and the simple, clean production wisely allows it to breathe freely. Most of the songs follow a slow, quiet verse/loud sucker chorus pattern and there's nothing on here that rivals anything from her debut, but everybody (including herself) has accepted that now. The absence of a world-class co-songwriter plays a part, but it's a refreshing change to see no external involvement. Accept Morisette for what she is--a female singer/songwriter with an exceptional, original voice and you won't be disappointed. --Ben Johncock
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