2011年 Jun 30日 Thursday, 1:39

Alanis Morissette - Feast on Scraps

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/174s/58919221.png

I bought this package of a DVD and CD in March of this year (2011), together with The Collection and Flavors of Entanglement. It contains a DVD of a live performance, which was recorded on the 13th of August in Ahoy, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. It took me a while to find that out, but I think it is pretty cool that it was in 'my' country: I could have been there actually! Although in 2002 I was not going to concerts that often. If she will visit the Netherlands again I am certainly going! The bonus disc consists of b-sides which were left off Under Rug Swept.
I watched the DVD two times and I must say, I don't really like it. It would have been much better if it was just the recording of the full concert, without all those things in between. Of course it is nice to have some additional material, like interviews and behind the scenes, but I would have liked it to be optional and not so much as it is now. Another disadvantage is that the songs are often not complete recordings of the same concert. You see pieces of the same song during different performances and they are pasted together. The sound quality of some of the recordings is just awful. It is maybe nice to see that she has performed a certain song on different locations, and how it looked during those concerts, but to me that is completely unnecessary. I would prefer to have nice complete live recordings of the songs with high sound quality. But, although I don't think I will watch this DVD again, I would really like to go to a live concert if she comes to the Netherlands again (as I mentioned before). Her performance is pretty good. Highlights in my opinion are Hand in My Pocket, Sympathetic Character, Uninvited and You Learn. Especially Uninvited really rocks! She is very energetic and is moving a lot on stage, not only walking around, but also jumping and hair-banging. Her hair is so beautiful and so long! It makes me jealous ;-) But what is she doing with her hands? Her hands are moving all the time, like she has spasms or something. When she holds the microphone with her right hand it is only her left hand that is doing that, but when she can she even does it with both of her hands. It looks really tiresome to me and also annoying because the movements are not functional at all and not supporting the music. Her outfit is nice, it looks very end of the 90's/beginning of 00's. In the behind-the-scenes parts you can see that she has really a lot of energy, she is very lively, but also pretty crazy and attracting attention all the time. She does some goofy, comedy-like things, like playing a robot and some weird types. It is nice, but also a bit too much, sometimes it is even annoying. I think if she is really like that all the time, I would not like to be around her, it would be very tiresome. The interviews are quite nice, I like it that she introduces all of her band members and says something nice about each of them. The parts that were recorded in the studio are also good. It is very nice to see how things really go there, because normally you never see anything of that process.
The bonus disc is very good. Most of the songs really have a rock sound, which is different from Under Rug Swept on which some of the songs sound more like pop. I think it would have been good to add them together to create one long album instead. A song that I really like is Sorry to Myself. The lyrics are very honest and describing something that is really good to do sometimes, when needed: apologize to yourself. Another beautiful song is Simple Together, describing the sadness that can be felt when your dreams are falling apart. Hands Clean (acoustic) is as good as the non-acoustic version. I really like this song, the honesty and the cruelty in the lyrics together with the kind of catchy melody. Last song I want to mention is Bent for You which I like because it contains some of the anger and energy, similar to some songs on Jagged Little Pill.
The front cover is pink, purple and orange-ish with the big butterfly that is also on Under Rug Swept (on the inside, in yellow, red and orange). The picture of her face above the butterfly with the colours overflowing from orange-ish to purple-ish looks kind of strange I think. I don't really like this cover, it is too much of a photo-editing exercise in my opinion.

Best tracks (of the CD): Bent for You, Sorry to Myself, Simple Together, Hands Clean (acoustic)

Tags: rock, alternative, singer-songwriter