The Love Addict

Alanis Morissette has felt heartbreak before, as anyone who’s listened to her ripped-from-life songs knows. But last year’s split with her fiance, actor Ryan Reynolds, turned out to be the big one.

“I was a full-blown love addict, so it was like, ‘I can’t keep doing this; my body can’t take it.’ Breakups are a horrible thing for almost everybody I know. For someone who is a love addict, it’s debilitating,” said Morisette, “So this was a huge, critical juncture for me. Everything broke, and it was an amazing and horrifying time.”

You can hear all about it on Morissette’s recent album, Flavors of Entanglement. Although it touches on other themes and isn’t framed as a literal blow-by-blow account, the 11 songs describe knotty conflicts and the pain of separation.“I miss your warmth and the thought of us bringing up our kids /And the part of you that walks with your stick-tied handkerchief,” she sings in “Torch,” dealing out vivid details in her distinctively conversational style.

She also gutted and remodeled her Los Angeles house (one of her favorite forms of expression, she says), rode motorcycles, worked on a book and designed jewellery.

And made music, this time with English producer Guy Sigsworth, who helped her return to an electronic dance style reminiscent of her records as a teen star in her native Canada. While Morissette has been known for raw candour since her landmark 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill,” parts of “Flavors” take it to a new level. This time she didn’t need to call on the journals she usually uses as a catalyst — the events were unfolding even as she was working on the music.

“These songs were written in the exact present moment as it was happening, so that may be something that’s palpably felt on the record.”

Sigsworth, who has worked extensively with Bjork and teamed with singer Imogen Heap in the group Frou Frou, says, “She seems to just centre on that focal point, the crisis issue at the heart of the song, and gets it immediately,” he says, “There were songs that had me in tears.”

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