CONCERT REVIEW - Alanis Morissette Alanis is all grown up.
Not that she (as a cultural figure) was ever "young" like many of today's pop stars, but the energy and anger she unleashed over a decade ago with "Jagged Little Pill" had something youthful and arrogant about it (being written by a jaded early-twenty something) that has characterized Alanis in pop culture ever since.
Now, Alanis is a not-so-jaded mid-thirty-something with more life and more heartbreak in her past, and she is ready for image to match her person.
The singer took the stage Tuesday with a well-dressed 5-piece male rock band, most of whom looked to be 5-10 years her junior. On stage she seemed peaceful, comfortable, and professional. There was little banter as the band kept momentum with well-crafted transitions from song to song, leading Alanis through a selection that surveyed her entire output and didn't play like a hits collection.
This doesn't mean she didn't play the hits. Her 19-song set consisted of 7 tracks from "Pill" and 5 from her latest effort "Flavours of Entanglement"; the rest was filled with a random sampling of deeper cuts from the remainder of her catalogue. Alanis has described this tour's setlist in interviews as "a combination of wonderful self-indulgence that keeps me and everybody on stage really happy." Noticeably absent were "Eight Easy Steps" and "Hands Clean" - two of Alanis' lesser hits that were regular staples of her sets earlier this year - and "My Humps," the singer's send-up of the Black-Eyed Peas sex romp.
But when Alanis did play the hits, they were the hits in 2008, not 1997. "Head Over Feet" got heavy acoustic guitar and syncopation; "You Learn" was filled with Hammond organ; and "Hand in My Pocket" was played as part of an evening-ending acoustic set, complete with jazzy drum work.
Most of the evening, Alanis was only the singing front woman. She strapped on a guitar for just a few numbers, and wailed on her harmonica only on the hits that required it. But her passion was there. She made her first appearance of the evening to the opening strains of "Uninvited" and spent the instrumental flourishes of the song flailing her hair under strobe lights. She dedicated her song "Everything" to "complicated girls" and changed the opening lyrics to set closer "So Pure" from "You from New York you are so relevant " to "You from Louisville..."
Set List:
“The Couch” (Part I)
“Uninvited”
“Versions Of Violence”
“All I Really Want”
“The Couch” (Part II)
“Not As We”
“Not the Doctor”
“Citizen Of the Planet”
“Head Over Feet”
“The Couch” (Part III)
“Sympathetic Character”
“Flinch”
“Moratorium”
“You Oughta Know”
“Tapes”
Acoustic Set
“Hand In My Pocket”
“Everything”
“So Pure”
Encore
“You Learn”
“Ironic”
“Thank U”
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