But with songs like “Mercy”, where Morissette attempts to pour the same emotions into the song as her previous works, it comes off somewhat disingenuous. “Uninvited” is an okay song, but in its effort to tap a more Middle Eastern spiritual flavor, the heavy orchestral strings just make the song clunky. It would be interesting to hear this song played with actual indigenous instruments a la Peter Gabriel or perhaps Sarah McLachlan, with Morissette’s towering vocal signature laid on top.
The musical score for Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It” is certainly an appropriate frame of reference for the period setting of the film, but Morissette’s doubling of her voice tracks seems a little anachronistic. I think part of the problem is “Let’s Do It” is just too cutesy a song for Morissette’s semi-growl, which just leaks out throughout the song. It’s almost a parody of itself.
The single “Crazy” is a better entry. Morissette returns to her roots here, and does a marvelous job of converting Seal’s searing lyrics into a forum for her own point of view. But beware of the Glen Ballard remix on the single- Mr. Ballard toys around a bit with effects diminishing some of the edginess, trying to make the song more appealing for commercial markets.
For either the formerly uninitiated like me or die hard fans of Morissette, The Collection is a smart, accessible, well put together retrospective of her career. It makes me look forward to a day when some future woman in my life with that unnerving migraine yells at me to "turn that shit down!”
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