Avril Lavigne: Avril Lavigne

AVRIL LAVIGNE: AVRIL LAVIGNE (2013)

1) Rock'n'Roll; 2) Here's To Never Growing Up; 3) 17; 4) Bitchin' Summer; 5) Let Me Go; 6) Give You What You Like; 7) Bad Girl; 8) Hello Kitty; 9) You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet; 10) Sippin' On Sunshine; 11) Hello Heartache; 12) Falling Fast; 13) Hush Hush.

The «reboot-style» album title makes it seem like a new potential star has just exploded on the scene — a sensible publicity move, considering that (a) mainstream pop stars seem to have much shor­tened shelf lives in the 21st century and (b) most people have probably already forgotten all about Avril Lavigne in two years. However, the publicity move is incomplete: the first single, ʽHere's To Never Growing Upʼ, immediately betrays the artist's age and pedigree, and ends up putting her on the right wavelength with her old fans of ten years ago, but hardly with the new fans who have no reason to identify with lines like "I'm like yeah whatever, we're still living like that". This ain't too good, Avril. An image slip-up.

For the critics rather than the fans, an even bigger slip-up will be the words-to-image connection. ʽRock'n'Rollʼ starts the record out on a punchy "I don't care about my makeup / I like it better with my jeans all ripped up", but then you look at the dark mascara thing around the eyes on the sleeve, and what the hell?.. This doesn't even refer to the fact that ʽRock'n'Rollʼ is anything but rock'n'roll. More of a happy round-the-campfire girlscout anthem, perhaps, dragged through the usual shit-filters of digital compression and autotuning to strip it of all identifiable life signs. And who helped her pen these lyrics? "I don't care if I'm misfit / I like it better than the hipster bull­shit" — perceiving A. L. as a «misfit in the hipster reference frame» is a serious candidate for the Topsy-Turvy Award of the year 2013.

Anyway, the basic point is that Avril Lavigne continues to honor the general commitment of alternating one lite-pop album with one attemptedly «serious» album (be it the quasi-goth seri­ous­ness of Under My Skin or the quasi-sensual seriousness of Goodbye Lullaby). This one, yet again, emphasizes the have-fun side of our beloved Canadian rebel, and you can tell it from the song titles alone, without hearing one note of the record. She's having herself a bitchin' summer, sippin' on sunshine like she's still 17, a hello-kitty bad girl stealing her parents' liquor and going all «here's to never growing up». But 17 is also post-pubescence, so behind that screen of eternal fun — hello heartache, she's falling fast and is quite ready to give you what you like, and if you don't like anything, let me go, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

The actual music is hardly distinguishable from the latest brand of teen-pop à la Miley Cyrus («harder» sections) or Taylor Swift («softer» sections) — I was kind of hoping for at least a few guitar-dependent catchy pop-punk tunes of the Best Damn Thing variety, but most prefer to fol­low the thoroughly rote standard of ʽWhat The Hellʼ: ʽBad Girlʼ, with «Deep Purple gone nu-metal» guitar parts and completely unexpected growling (!) vocals by Marylin Manson himself (!) in the background, is sort of a pleasant exception to the rule. Everything else is, at best, acoustic-based alt-pop that rarely even takes the trouble of disguising itself as something «rebellious» — at worst, really embarrassing attempts at modernizing one's image, such as ʽHello Kittyʼ, an attempt to amalgamate Japanese pop culture gimmickry with a distinctly K-pop flavor (and I'm assuming the Japanese clichés in the intro signify a defying unwillingness not to confuse Korea with Japan).

On the good side, we do have ourselves some catchy vocal melodies, but somehow they all seem to be hiding in the «softer» section — ʽGive You What You Likeʼ has an emotionally resonant series of falsetto flourishes in the chorus, and the la-la-las of the childish, but cute ʽHello Heart­acheʼ also turn out to be surprisingly moody. The same does not apply to boring power ballads like ʽLet Me Goʼ and ʽHush Hushʼ, but it still seems to indicate that, perhaps, she made a mistake by distancing from the vibes of Goodbye Lullaby — that it is sentimental pop, riding on vocal nuances, which should have been her weapon of choice, rather than a «rebellious rock» vibe. At least in 2002, when it already sounded phoney, it was still fresh, and the related marketology still incorporated a tiny bit of naïvete. By 2013, phoneyness is the only thing that remains. So, Avril, thumbs down, and here's to finally growing up, you know. Maybe your loyal fans haven't grown, I can admit that, but if they haven't, it's simply because they're idiots. No need to follow a bad example. You can't even play guitar like Angus Young — why keep on wearing his shorts?

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Avril Lavigne: Goodbye Lullaby

AVRIL LAVIGNE: GOODBYE LULLABY (2011)

1) Black Star; 2) What The Hell; 3) Push; 4) Wish You Were Here; 5) Smile; 6) Stop Standing There; 7) I Love You; 8) Everybody Hurts; 9) Not Enough; 10) 4 Real; 11) Darlin'; 12) Remember When; 13) Goodbye; 14*) Alice.

Does the title suggest, in any way, that Canada's latest piece of candy from Pandora's box may be considering early retirement, especially if the album does not sell well enough? (As of late March, it still hasn't reached the top of the charts and it looks like the bus has already been missed). Be­cause Goodbye Lullaby clearly proves one thing: in ten years' time, the lady Lavigne has not been able to grow up, and since in another three years, when she hits thirty, any attempt to recre­ate the burly success of The Best Damn Thing will seem gruesomely inadequate, it is, perhaps, high time to seek another line of work.

At least her attempts to sound «serious» on her second album were painted in black overtones. It might not have been «her», really, but it was a misguided attempt to try to move in the generally right direction. Now the lightness and humor take a step back once again, but the overtones are dazzlingly — and sickeningly — white (not surprisingly, check out the album cover and contrast it with the photo on Under My Skin). Goodbye Lullaby is, simply put, an album of simplistic, tender, but «seriously conceited» love songs. A little joy, a little pain, a little happiness, a little suffering, the usual thing, nothing particularly respectable or cutting edge, even from a sternly mainstream point of view.

The album starts off deceptively — doubly deceptively, in fact, first with a little bit of a piano bal­lad ('Black Star') setting one up for romance, then suddenly launching into 'What The Hell', an obvious attempt to recreate the smash success of 'Girlfriend'. But if 'Girlfriend' truly had its guilty pleasure side, a head-spinning hyper-dumb rock song that even the Ramones could have endorsed, 'What The Hell' is a lame shadow, an overcompressed bore with no discernible guitar melody, a phenomenal lack of concern for the lyrics (lines like "You say that I'm messing with your head / Boy, I like messing in your bed" cannot be even unintentionally funny) coupled with a strange mes­sage that does not fit at all with the rest of the album ("All my life I've been good, but now, what the hell", she states and then switches over to soppy, inoffensive ballads for the rest of the record), and was that a whiff of auto-tuned vocals I sensed on the chorus? This is the kind of stuff that is usually reserved for the likes of Miley Cyrus these days, and I did think better of Avril.

After such a crappy start, one might even get a stronger craving for soppy ballads, and I cannot say that everything here is rotten. These are not power ballads; they're teen-pop ballads, with up­beat rhythms and light choruses and acoustic guitars coming through, with maybe a couple excep­tions ('Remember When' rips it up Diane Warren-style, even though the song is credited purely to Avril — who knows, maybe when she's retired from the stage, she might try on Satan's crown for a while). 'Everybody Hurts' should be docked a point for getting people to mention R.E.M. and Avril Lavigne in the same sentence (see, she's done it again), but its chorus is believable, as is the funky anguish in '4 Real' and even the desperation in 'Wish You Were Here' (what's up with all these titles, anyway, has the English-speaking world finally run out of new verb phrases? Or is this some sort of primitivist defiance — in 2011, to call one of your songs 'I Love You'?).

In the end, there are two good sides to this. One: Avril Lavigne is very far from being the worst singer-song­writer you ever heard in your life. She knows what a pop hook is, and she can even craft some that do not carry nauseous side effects. Two: Avril Lavigne is a fan of the good old guitar-and-piano approach, understanding that a pop hook goes best with a traditionally grounded pop arrangement. That's about it (okay, third side: no matter how hard it is to look sexy in a white wedding dress, she does manage it on the front cover). Bad sides: no single idea is explored here to its logical end. Hooks aren't sung with the proper conviction, arrangements aren't given much thought beyond the basic choice of instrument, and, worst of all, the whole thing is simply way beyond her abilities. She wanted to turn this into some Solemn Celebration of the Pure Force of Love, but can a one-armed swimmer win the Olympic 50-metre freestyle?

Thumbs down — but, in all honesty, it is nothing short of a miracle that Goodbye Lullaby co­mes across as «disappointing» rather than simply Godawful (well, 'What The Hell' is Godawful). Actually, it is possible that Lavigne's worst mistake was her production team (including people like Max Martin, who has produced albums by just about every horrible teen pop artist on the planet). Apparently, Nigel Godrich couldn't be bought — or, more likely, she just doesn't know who he is in the first place.

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Avril Lavigne: The Best Damn Thing

AVRIL LAVIGNE: THE BEST DAMN THING (2007)

1) Girlfriend; 2) I Can Do Better; 3) Runaway; 4) The Best Damn Thing; 5) When You're Gone; 6) Everything Back But You; 7) Hot; 8) Innocence; 9) I Don't Have To Try; 10) One Of Those Girls; 11) Contagious; 12) Keep Holding On.

Color me crazy, but the more I listen to it, the more it does sound like the best damn thing — by Avril's personal standards, of course. So it looks like the whole wannabe-goth schtick didn't quite work out, despite professional help and supportive sales and reviews. No big deal. Now she is back to glossy pop punk basics.

What is quite seriously refreshing about Avril's third album is that it is unassailable from any theoretical angle. It assumes nothing. It does not present her as anybody that she is really not. One could foam at the mouth for hours in endless debates about whether she really identified with the «skate culture» on Let Go or was just a pathetic poseur (not to mention the even fatter, juicier question of whether «skate culture» is actually «culture», etc.). The Best Damn Thing baits you into nothing. One may like it or be indifferent to it, but hate it? Maybe only for its hit singles oc­cupying way too much TV and radio space, but, next to most of the stuff that competed with it in 2007, these songs are masterful masterpieces.

If you know 'Girlfriend' — and if you were more than two years old in 2007 and were not living in Darfur or Eastern Highlands of Papua, you could hardly not know 'Girlfriend' — you pretty much know the rest of the album. Fast, flashy, pop-punk anthems with catchy choruses, all about boy-girl relations, usually with strong emphasis on «girl». She even swears on a couple of tracks — ooh, controversial! — but don't worry, there are «clean» versions available for underage fans whose parents think that hearing 'I'm the motherfucking princess' as 'I'm the m-m-m-m-m prin­cess' must at least postpone the Doom of the Gods, if not at all cancel it.

The main seductive part of the trick is that, even if Lavigne is quite far removed from symbo­lizing intelligence in art, these songs, for the most part, make her sound dumber than she really is, and that's excellent because it makes way for irony. 'Girlfriend' is so grossly overdriven, in its music, its frenzied backing vocals, its minimalistic lyrics (and its obvious tributes to the equally minimalistic past, e. g. the Rubinoos' 1979 hit 'I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend' which contains the exact same "hey-hey, you-you" bit), that anyone who'd like to take it seriously — e. g., as an in­struction for strong-willed gals to take what they want when they see it — must be at the lower rungs of the human adequacy scale.

All right, so from time to time she is overdoing it. "I'm the one, I'm the one who wears the pants" ('I Don't Have To Try') sounds stupid rather than dumb (there's a big difference) — if she's the one who wears the pants, what the heck is he supposed to be wearing? "I hate it when a guy doesn't understand why a certain time of month I don't want to hold his hand" — ugh. (Okay, I admit this can be a problem, but I don't want to hear about real problems on an album like this, I want to hear nothing but completely braindead stuff). Some of the lyrical and musical moments are cringeworthy, although they will vary from taste to taste. But overall, the lightweight atmos­phere and the songwriting craft still win me over.

To this should be added that the record sounds just fine — Avril's backing band has effectively made a transition from third- (fourth-?)generation grungey blandness to upbeat retro-punk, taking their cues from the Ramones themselves rather than from their far-removed descendants. And she herself finally comes across as a self-confident and versatile singer. Anyone who doubts that ne­eds to check out the standards — for instance, compare any of these explosive outbursts (say, 'Everything Back But You', gurgling with breakneck-speed excitement) with the limp, lifeless likes of Miley Cyrus ("There's seven things I hate about you!").

I even admit to liking one of the three power ballads on here (unfortunately, these were most like­ly obligatory inclusions so as not to displease entirely the new «serious» brand of fans she got her­self with Under My Skin) — 'When You're Gone' is maddeningly well written and features a great showcase for the girl's range during the bridge section. Move over, Celine Dion.

In short, I don't know how much of a «real thing» this is, but I do know that this is an expertly crafted pop record, and that there is no good reason to praise the world out of, say, the Pipettes, all the while bashing The Best Damn Thing — the only big difference being that the Pipettes want you to have fun by going against the general flow of things, whereas Lavigne is perfectly okay about going after the flow. Assuming that «to everything there is a season», as Roger McGuinn once told us coming down from Mount Sinai, The Best Damn Thing is truly the best damn way, or, at least, one of the few best damn ways, to integrate the snob and the masses, pro­vided the snob can see the links with the non-commercial stuff and the masses can see that there is a line that separates Lavigne from utterly monstruous glam-punk constructions (Pink!), not to mention the ever lowering standards of teen pop.

A friendly thumbs up: there is little hope that she will continue making music in the exact same manner (too much pressure from the industry that will force her to start «growing up along with her audiences»), but that does not take away from the pure aural-trash pleasure.

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Avril Lavigne: Under My Skin

AVRIL LAVIGNE: UNDER MY SKIN (2004)

1) Take Me Away; 2) Together; 3) Don't Tell Me; 4) He Wasn't; 5) How Does It Feel; 6) My Happy Ending; 7) No­body's Home; 8) Forgotten; 9) Who Knows; 10) Fall To Pieces; 11) Freak Out; 12) Slipped Away; 13*) I Always Get What I Want.

It actually takes a few listens to this album — a feat that most sensible, reasonable people will feel no need to perform — to understand that the noun phrases «Avril Lavigne» and «creative growth» are not fully incompatible within a sentence. Yes, the girl's career does follow a curve, and there is a certain pinch of interest in following it.

Obviously, I am not talking about the much discussed change of image: instead of the overdriven skater brat of Let Go, Under My Skin gives us a black-and-white, Deeply Tragic, goth-over­toned Lavigne, all set on «maturation», a.k.a. inflating teenage tribulations to cosmic proportions. It is quite telling that one of the hit songs, 'Nobody's Home', was co-written with ex-Evanescence guitar player Ben Moody: the influence of his band's skill at merchandising doom and gloom is all over this record. (I will, however, refrain from deep discussions on whose metaphysical con­ception of art — Lavigne's or Amy Lee's — has contributed more to our spiritual development). The overall best thing I can say about this shift of image, though, is that it doesn't make things any worse. If you are a poseur by nature, it doesn't really matter if you are also a chameleon.

The real reason why Under My Skin is a tad more interesting is that Lavigne apparently takes this songwriting business seriously, and that there is a significant jump in song quality from the previous record. Maybe it is her new songwriting partner, fellow Canadian Chantal Kreviazuk, pushing her on to new levels, or perhaps professional obligations spurred her on to digest musical influences other than Blink-182 and Matchbox 20, but, whatever be the case, most of the songs on Under My Skin at least qualify as semi-decent mainstream grunge / pop punk in which music, vocal melodies, and lyrics generally serve one and the same purpose, and that purpose is a tiny bit smarter than just «rock out, dude».

See, normally, an album like that should only provoke teeth-grinding reactions. All of these songs with their exaggerated darkness, tales of breakups, self-exile, PAIN PAIN PAIN — the fuckin' brat is twenty years old, what does she know about pain (and let us not start about the age of Ju­liet, whom we only know as a Shakesperian projection anyway)? Yet the obligatory three listens went down smoothly, in fact, each next one was smoother than the one before. How come the barf bag is still empty?

Hooks and craft, baby. Kreviazuk (who, by the way, is 10 years older than Lavigne and certainly qualifies better for writing such an album) and whoever else she is working with really did a solid job of providing her with well-written choruses — and Lavigne does an equally good job at sin­ging them. This is where her vocal skills really come in handy: nowhere near diva-level, so the songs don't come across as blown tremendously out of proportion, but still loud, strong, and ex­pressive enough to minimize all the damage from «posing».

Hilariously, the most memorable song on the album is also its least typical — the vapid, girlish pop-punk anthem 'He Wasn't', played at breakneck speed and winning us over with its ABBA-like "uh huh"s. (Lavigne must have sensed it herself, or else it wouldn't have served as the blue­print for just about all of The Best Damn Thing). The only other song that is sort of a «stand out» is the already mentioned 'Nobody's Home', because it does, indeed, sound somewhat like Evanes­cence-lite, with more complex vocal overdubs than usual, falsettos rising into screaming and background guitars that actually seem to at least be wanting to shape their sound into some sort of complex melodic figure (not that they could ever hope to — complex melodic figures are harmful ballast for Avril's legions of fans).

The rest... well, actually, I would be interested in seeing if someone could do something with this kind of material if it were freed from the monotonous grasp of post-grunge guitars. Phasing? Wah-wahs? A string quartet? A Mellotron? How about «Avril Lavigne and The London Sym­phony Orchestra»? Or at least spicing it up with bits and pieces of Eastern motives, à la Big Guru Alanis? Until then, Under My Skin is a curious anomaly — a predictable failure at an attempt to add «deep» and «cool» to the list of keywords, yet, in spite of all odds, a thoroughly listenable one. Plus, 'He Wasn't' is, indeed, one of the giggliest pop tunes of the decade.

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Avril Lavigne: Let Go

AVRIL LAVIGNE: LET GO (2002)

1) Losing Grip; 2) Complicated; 3) Sk8er Boi; 4) I'm With You; 5) Mobile; 6) Unwanted; 7) Tomorrow; 8) Anything But Ordinary; 9) Things I'll Never Say; 10) My World; 11) Nobody's Fool; 12) Too Much To Ask; 13) Naked; 14*) Why.

Question: AVRIL LAVIGNE? Why????? What's up with, like, GOOD music?

Answer: Hey, wouldn't you be bored, too, if all you ever had to review was good music?

Q: But it's not like you haven't written about bad music altogether. What about those fifteen awful Aretha Franklin albums all in a row?

A: Nah, that was just side effects of the trade. «Know your enemy» is a fairly wise maxim, and Aretha sure as hell isn't the enemy, no matter how much crap there is in her catalog.

Q: But Avril Lavigne? I mean, Avril Lavigne? Who the heck is Avril Lavigne? Who the hell is going to be listening to Avril Lavigne in five years' time? Hell, who on Earth is listening to Avril Lavigne right now? And how is it possible to write anything insightful about Avril Lavigne? I mean, even the T&A factor don't work properly this time!

A: Well, yeah, it's probably true that Avril, per se, does not offer all that much insight. It is far more interesting to take a look at the world in which a person as completely gray and un­re­mar­kable as Avril Lavigne could sell 16 million copies of her debut album, Let Go, earn the sucking-up of pretty much all mainstream press in existence, and become one of MTV's lead darling girls of the entire decade.

Q: Come on now, surely there is nothing particularly amazing or unpredictable about that. People are sheep and MTV people are their fascist shepherds, and Avril is just one of their poster girls. Nobody gives a damn about the actual music on Let Go being just a bunch of trivially rehashed pop-punk power chords; all that matters is that Lavigne is (a) «one of us» and (b) «a rebellious spirit». Nobody expects her dumb teenage audiences to sit and scratch their heads and think stuff like «hmm, this music is sort of simple and generic and unoriginal compared to Sigur Rós», and the dumb teenage audiences predictably satisfy expectations. What else is there to say?

A: Well, maybe not much, but sometimes it takes a good listen to an «awful» album like Let Go to properly trigger the thinking process, rather than to a «decent» recording. For instance, no one would probably insist that, in terms of complexity of melodies and arrangements, Let Go is in any way inferior to any «true» punk album ever released (the ones that really go after the three-chord aesthetics, I mean).

Q: You know better than me that it's not the complexity that counts, it's the catchiness and the energy and the spirit and the relevance. Don't tell me you get a kick out of comparing Let Go with The Clash. The bitch calls herself «punk» and she'd never even heard the Sex Pistols before crapping out this shit­pile.

A: Well, at the risk of offending somebody who cares, I'd say that Let Go got catchiness — at least, some of the singles, like 'Complicated', are instantaneously catchy, and some choruses eve­n­tually reach even my subconscious on subsequent listens ('Anything But Ordinary', 'My World'). Energy? Spirit? Look at her videos — she sure as hell is willing to invest quite a bit of energy in those performances. Crashing guitars into windshields and all. I mean, she certainly believes in the things she plays. She believes that the real-life opposition between «punk» and «ballet» is still relevant, and that in this opposition, «punk» = «Good» and «ballet» = «Evil», to be overthrown by the «cool people».

Obviously, we can be bitter about it and say she's really as dumb as that, to believe in that shit, but to just call her a «fake» and be done with it would be rather rash. How is she more «fake» than, say, The Apples In Stereo, who have built their entire career on mimicry and we still love them? Who is more «fake» — herself, clearly grounded in the realities of her life, no matter how generic it might be, or Björk, who has spent a lifetime constructing an alter ego as far removed from reality as possible? And «relevance» — that's absurd; she's been relevant for millions of people for almost a decade.

Q: Yeah, for millions of dumb people happy enough to chew on MTV's cud. I give you it may not be her fault; she's just another brainwashed victim herself, deeply believing that her music helps people out to «break stereotypes», «be themselves», «live their own lives», that she's doing some­thing honest and brave and artistic when in reality she's just a helpless cog in the machine, and her pathetic underdeveloped brain lacks the capacity to understand that. Really, what else is there to say? What next — shall we, God forbid, start discussing her lyrics? "He was a skater boy, she said see ya later boy, he wasn't good enough for her"? Aren't we doing the bitch, and all of her croonies, way too much of a favor even mentioning her existence?

A: I don't know, I've thought like that for a long time, but I'm not exactly sure these days. We can always pretend to ignore «artists» like Lavigne — the «we» in question meaning «elitist listeners who have given up on humanity as a whole» — but perhaps, if «we» are at all interested in not dwindling down eventually to something like 0,000001% of the population (statistically nearing to­tal non-exis­tence), it would make sense to at least try and spot the few good things about the girl, if only to make certain that we actually care about the rest of the world.

Sure, it's pretty damn grim to see what used to be «The Beatles type» vs. «The Stones type» mu­tate into «Britney or Avril?» these days. It's a tasty, juicy matter for sociologists, perhaps, but har­d­ly for raffinated music lovers. On the other hand, «we» keep seeing ourselves falling into our own trap. «We» do not like to come across as too pretentious and smarmy (or do we?), and «we» normally have no problem about enjoying simple music, but «we» can never resist poking fun at the likes of Lavigne and her fans, either. Maybe there's more to be said about Lavigne than just a bunch of jokes about skater boys?

Q: Come on then, let's hear it! Any deep intellectual considerations on Let Go and its overall im­por­tan­ce? Any provoking remarks on how to integrate its values with those of the culturally ad­vanced members of society?

A: Well...

....uh...

...Nah.

It's a pretty damn terrible record, to tell the truth. But I'm still thinking.

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