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Sitting in a dressing room at a Burbank rehearsal studio where she and her band are preparing for a long stretch of touring, Morissette, 34, doesn’t seem like someone who’s been to rock bottom.
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“There were songs where I would listen and be almost in tears and think, ‘Where did this come from? There was nothing here this morning.’ ” “She seems to just center on that focal point, the crisis issue at the heart of the song, and she gets it immediately,” he says. Sigsworth, who has worked extensively with Björk and teamed with singer Imogen Heap in the group Frou Frou, says, “So many of my ideas about songwriting have been changed by working with her, because she works so fast as a writer and gets the raw statement of the song so precisely so quickly.” With songwriting I spend a lot of time living life, accruing all these experiences, journaling, and then by the time I get to the studio I’m teeming with the drive to write.” I put all my energy - and this also shows up in other areas of my life - my energy goes into being ready. “I don’t change anything once we’re done. “Typically I go in the studio and whatever I’m contemplating that day will wind up being a song. These songs were written in the exact present moment as it was happening, so that may be something that’s palpably felt on the record.”Ī lot of that immediacy also stems from Morissette’s unusual method of lyric writing, which is pretty much stream-of-consciousness. “A lot of times I’ll write in retrospect. “There is an immediacy in that it was all written in real time,” she says.
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This time she didn’t need to call on the journals she usually uses as a catalyst, because the events were unfolding as she was working on the music in London and Los Angeles. While Morissette has been known for raw candor since her landmark 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill,” parts of “Flavors” take it to a new level. She also gutted and remodeled her Los Angeles house (one of her favorite forms of expression, she says, equal to making two or three albums), rode motorcycles, worked on a book and designed jewelry.Īnd made music, this time with English producer Guy Sigsworth, who helped her return on some tracks to an electronic dance style reminiscent of her records as a teen star in her native Canada. It was just really moment by moment, step by step, snail’s pace. I went to therapy five days a week, I journaled, I had a lot of support from this incredible group of friends. “I miss your warmth and the thought of us bringing up our kids / And the part of you that walks with your stick-tied handkerchief,” she sings in “Torch,” dealing out vivid details in her distinctively conversational style.īut more of the songs - “Not as We,” “Moratorium,” “Giggling Again for No Reason” - are drawn from the prolonged aftermath of the breakup, a process leading to what she calls “the Phoenix rising.”
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While it touches on other themes, and isn’t framed as a literal blow-by-blow account, the 11 songs describe knotty conflicts and the pain of separation. Not surprisingly, you can hear all about it on Morissette’s new album, “Flavors of Entanglement,” due out today. Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time.” So this was a huge, critical juncture for me. “I’ve been on a constant journey toward finally surrendering and hitting the rock bottom that I’ve been avoiding my whole life. For someone who is a love addict, it’s debilitating. And I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this, my body can’t take it.’ Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. “I think it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Morissette says. But last year’s split with her fiancé, actor Ryan Reynolds, turned out to be the big one. ALANIS MORISSETTE has felt heartbreak before, as anyone who’s listened to her ripped-from-life songs knows.