Album Review: Alanis Morissette - 'Such Pretty Forks in the Road'
Alanis Morissette once sang “I haven’t got it all figured out just yet.” With her first album in eight years, Such Pretty Forks in the Road, she’s still working on that.
“I was just trying to keep it together,” she sings on the opening track “Smiling,” introducing us to an individual who’s doing what they can to put on a brave face. Morissette’s haunting vocal style is so full of emotion it’s theatrical, but none of it is a show. A quarter of a century has come and gone since the release of her popular album in 1995, Jagged Little Pill, and Morissette has had some time to reflect.
“To my girl, all your innocence and fire: when you reach out, I am here, hell or high water,” she continues on “Ablaze.” Jagged Little Pill was put out when she was only 21 years old -- hardly old enough to drink, much less grapple with the hurdles that the music industry in the 90s could throw at a young woman. Singing to her younger self, she’s more easily able to recognize the turbulence of it all.
And indeed, the album moves into tracks like “Reasons I Drink,” a bluntly titled song that drags us through all of the pain, torture, and heartache hitting the bottle can cause.
“Call me what you need to make yourself comfortable,” she sings on “Diagnosis,” another gut-wrenching track that announces a form of defeat -- of finality. If you can’t beat them, join them.
It’s the vulnerability that makes Such Pretty Forks in the Road a worthy listen. We have, thankfully, entered an era in which women can write, produce, and release music that isn’t about their hot new beau and designed to sit prettily on the Top 40 radio chart. This is the music of real, human women -- the kind that’s dark, raw, painful, and truthful. In so many words: this is really what it’s like. It’s heartbreaking on one hand, but astonishingly beautiful on the other, and it’s given us some of the best albums of 2020 thus far -- Fiona Apple’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Phoebe Bridgers’ Punisher, and now Morissette’s own version of the long road through the music industry that just doesn’t seem to be as long or as difficult for men of the same level. It is never easy to bear all like that.
“Now that we all know better, you’ll be haunted,” Morissette sings on “Reckoning,” which takes a turn for the brighter side, and yet still acknowledges that trauma and desperation never truly leave us, regardless of whether we are the victim or the predator.
The closing track of the record, “Nemesis,” revisits the unknown.
“Change, you are my nemesis,” she sings, “transition I hold my breath.” The future is uncertain, the unknown is vast, but Such Pretty Forks in the Road might be the first step towards that change for Morissette.
Words by Allison Rapp