Alanis will release a new album in June
Maverick/Reprise recording artist Alanis Morissette has announced a 9 June for her New Zealand release for highly anticipated new album Flavors Of Entanglement. Co-written and produced by Guy Sigsworth (Bj�rk, Imogen Heap), the album is Morissette's first original studio release in four years.
While hewing to a familiar process - creating songs as snapshots of her life - Morissette found cathartic support during a big transition in her life. "I often write in retrospect, but this was written in real time," she says. "This record helped me through some fragile moments. Every song was like a life raft."
Morissette's penchant for eclecticism, whether musical, spiritual or otherwise, brought new sounds and styles into this latest effort, which she's been previewing for fans during her tour with Matchbox Twenty. Among the new songs included in her electrifying live set is lead single "Underneath," which reflects Mahatma Gandhi's notion that "You must be the change you want to see in the world"; "Versions of Violence," a jarring deconstruction of human behaviour, and "Citizen of the Planet," a poetic narrative of her life story and transnational perspective set against a backdrop blending Eastern percussion, strings and electronic hues.
"There's not another artist-male or female-who can take you on the kind of emotional journey that Alanis can," says Sigsworth. "She has this ginormous, super-massive, planet-eating emotional range. She goes all the way-10 on the Richter Scale-and we're at the epicenter with her as she sings whole worlds into existence. She can be raging and hostile, distraught and desolately heartbroken, glowingly nostalgic, sensual, breezy and self-deprecating-all in one album."
Since her arrival in 1995 Alanis Morissette has become one of the most influential singer-songwriter-musicians in contemporary music. Her deeply expressive music and performances have earned vast critical praise, seven Grammy Awards and a dedicated fan base that extends throughout the world, with album sales exceeding 40 million worldwide. Morissette's 1995 debut, Jagged Little Pill, was followed by such eclectic and acclaimed albums as Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie (1998), MTV Unplugged (1999), Under Rug Swept (2002), So-Called Chaos (2004), Jagged Little Pill Acoustic (2005), her greatest hits album, The Collection (2005), as well as musical contributions to theatrical releases ranging from Dogma and The Devil Wears Prada to De-Lovely, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and City Of Angels (the latter two earning her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song and Grammys for Best Rock Song and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, respectively). She's lent her talents to other albums and forums, including collaborations with Ringo Starr, Dave Matthews Band and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
Her acting work includes roles on HBO's "Sex and the City" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm," along with a three-episode arc on FX's "Nip/Tuck" and the part of God in the controversial film Dogma. On stage, Morissette starred in The Vagina Monologues and in the off-Broadway play The Exonerated as death row inmate Sunny Jacobs. Morissette recently completed her first lead film role as "Sylvia" in the film adaptation of Philip K Dick's novel Radio Free Albemuth.
Of course, she delivered one of the most memorable performances of her career last year with a riotous parody of the Black Eyed Peas' hit "My Humps." Entertainment Weekly lauded the YouTube sensation, which has been viewed more than 13 million times to date, as one of the top downloads of '07 and praised Alanis for "revisiting the age-old question, 'What you gonna do with all that ass, all that ass inside them jeans?'"
Flavors Of Entanglement out 9 June, 2008
