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Alanis Morissette |
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Chicago Theatre
Chicago, Illinois
12.14.02 |
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review by Matt Carmichael
First songs are tone-setters. It's as true live as it is on records. As Alanis Morissette brought the normally sedate Chicago Theater to its collective feet by leading her set with "All I Really Want"—harmonica wailing, waist-length hair flailing—she threw down a musical gauntlet. In the final stop on a seemingly never-ending tour in support of Under Rug Swept, Morissette and her five-piece backing band were in polished form. Morissette herself is obviously the center of attention when she's on stage, but the singer has always surrounded herself with talented support, including, on this tour, former Jane's Addiction bassist Eric Avery. As they changed gears and changed moods, the players had the tight and confident sound of a group that had done it all before but weren't yet tired of it. No matter how cohesive the band, however, the set itself was a little too unbalanced to hold entirely together.
In her early days, with just Jagged Little Pill to pull from, Morissette could deliver a non-stop explosion of emotion. Even on slower, more deliberate tracks like "Head Over Feet," the raw feelings behind her songs shone through. The themes of the content could tie together the set. But Morissette is no longer an embittered 20-year-old spewing lyrical venom at all the industry glad-handers and ex-boyfriends who couldn't handle her. Quite naturally, Morissette has begun to tackle deeper and more spiritual themes in her songs as she has matured. (That said, with tracks such as "Sympathetic Character," the good and bad of dating are still running themes—Morissette's catalog is a walking thesaurus of relationships' potential and failures.) Yet, the catharsis of picking at scabs on stage day-after-day caused Morissette to re-work some of the anti-this-and-that tirades from her debut.
Taken piece by piece in the live setting, each song received the treatment it required—either solo Morissette with a single spotlight and a glittery guitar, or full band fully rocking in front of a backdrop featuring Morissette in profile face-to-face with a man. As a whole, however, the result was a set that wavered and couldn't reliably fall back on its usual lynch-pins. "You Oughta Know," normally a show centerpiece, lacked the intensity of the studio version and the edge that the lyrics deserve. Instead of searing, it sputtered and ran out of steam entirely on the bridge. Meanwhile, some of the newer, slower tracks, such as "Simple Together" (from the new live DVD set Feast On Scraps), were revealed to be exquisite numbers that showcased Morissette's range both as writer and vocalist. These songs proved hard to work into a set with all the rock numbers. Because Morissette's songs tend toward extremes, her current concert format has some rough transitions and flows less smoothly than one might want.
Winding up her 90-minute set and the entire tour with "Thank You" seemed the appropriate choice. If ever a song begged for some situational lyrical improvisation, this is this one, yet it was performed as written. Much credit is due to Morissette, who has never stopped pushing her limits. As she sings on "Sorry To Myself," Alanis Morissette is her own harshest critic. But in doing so, she erects obstacles even the most seasoned performers would have a tough time overcoming. Sometimes, she throws down that gauntlet just a hair's breadth out of reach.
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