Staying In
COMPACT DISC jagged little pill. Alanis Morrissette(Maverick).
When a girl can thank Madonna and Freddy DeMann on her debut and get Flea and Dave Navarro to drop in for a bit of guitar work, you know she's got to be a special case. As a result Alanis Morrissette arrives with a bang, and a hit in the bag with the punchy You Oughta Know.
Thing is, You Oughta Know sounds pretty tired and familiar after a few outings, and so does a lot of the work on jagged little pill. Judging by her performance at the MTV Video Music Awards, she looks like she has a strong live presence; that's why jagged little pill is sometimes surprisingly tame. Tracks like Perfect or Hand in My Pocket are a little wet - and the lyrics can sound frighteningly like psycho-babble for the rocker image she's cultivating.
Although she's getting a big promotional push, Morrissette (with producer and co-writer Glen Ballard) has produced an uneven CD; the highs make you hunger for her next release, but the soft stuff is terribly derivative.
Batman Forever - Music From The Motion Picture (Warner Records) This compilation CD (as opposed to the score soundtrack, also available at the same price) is a high that Hollywood should consistently aim for. It actually moves to the beat of the film - as opposed to being tacked on as a marketing ploy - yet all the tracks work individually. It has generated serial hits already, and with the exception of P J Harvey's One Time Too Many, everything here should be a chart-topper.
Batman Forever is almost a polaroid; it captures the film, the year in rock, and definitely the attention. It's one of those CDs that you play exhaustively, tire of, and may never pick out of the rack again; but that's still OK. In other words, instant gratification - and fantastic party music.
BOOKS The Sportswriter. Richard Ford (Random House, Vintage Contemporaries imprint) First published in 1986, this is getting a new push on paperback with the release of Richard Ford's follow-up, Independence Day. But The Sportswriter is a marvellously literate snapshot of a beleaguered man's lost weekend - even though you might recoil at some of the sentiments expressed - and deserves to be rediscovered.