Angry females everywhere will find Alanis Morissette’s acoustic revisit of “Jagged Little Pill” a bit disconcerting.
10 years has taught Morissette to write slightly better vocals, however, the anger and urgency so powerfully present in the first “Jagged Little Pill” disappears in the acoustic version.
With a slower tempo, the vengeful “You Oughta Know” sounds psychotic instead of bitter. Instead of driving fans to mimic words, the once quirky and upbeat “Hand in My Pocket,” urges the question: What exactly is Alanis talking about?
Even with acoustic additions, other songs on the album have little variation. “You Learn,” the catchy song that the album takes its name from, is still one of the best songs on the album. Topping the album’s stable is “Ironic,” in which Morissette changed the lyrics from “It’s meeting the man of my dreams and meeting his beautiful wife,” to “meeting his beautiful husband.”
The second time around Morissette and Glen Ballard, the original producer, incorporated a variety of obscure musical instruments such as the marxophone, the perapaloshka, and the pianoforte into the album.
Ballard, along with Suzie Katayama, also wrote string arrangements for several songs. The funky use of violins at the beginning of “All I Really Want” elevates the unnoteworthy song to better than average. However, in “Right Through You” the orchestral arrangements serve as an unneeded prelude to the song.
“Wake Up,” “Perfect” and “Not the Doctor,” are considerably better with the acoustic supplements.
If she had the capability at age 21, it is likely that “Jagged Little Pill Acoustic” is the album Morissette originally wanted to create.
