Avril Lavigne

[Sharifa]

Title: Avril Lavigne

Author: Josh Love

Publication: Athens Banner-Herald

Date: 10.28.2004





One of Avril Lavigne's major selling points is her honesty, her apparent refusal to pull punches when it comes to romantic discord and other difficulties of teenage girlhood.

So it's kind of a shock when she drops a whopper of a falsehood on "Fall to Pieces," a cuddly ballad from her sophomore album, "Under My Skin."

Quoth Avril, "I don't want to talk about it."

Say what? All Avril does is talk about it. She'd make a perfectly typical ingénue on the singer-songwriter circuit but for the fact she fancies herself a rocker, and more importantly, she's been able to hook up with certified hitmakers such as The Matrix and Chantal Kreviazuk, who've helped Avril become a vibrant pop star rather than a dour-faced teen punker.

No doubt there's irony in the fact "Under My Skin" is purportedly a confessional, personal album, and yet the highly-compressed handiwork of Avril's producers is impossible to miss.

Studio trickery coats these would-be hits in a thick sheen of polish, and perfectly calibrates every millisecond for maximum emotional impact. Rockers like "He Wasn't" and "Take Me Away" sound almost militarily precise, while "My Happy Ending" delivers maybe the most affecting, most genuinely yearning pop-radio chorus of the year.

That kind of impeccable songcraft seems to be a foolproof recipe for success, and you start to think maybe Avril's not so essential for the star machine to run. Then you hear a listless adult contemporary ballad like "Nobody's Home," where all the pieces are in place for pop paydirt, but the effect still noticeably is dulled simply because Avril's been stripped of her personality.

Compare that to the brave sexual frankness and self-possession of "Don't Tell Me," and it's clear Avril could dazzle on her own even if somebody else decided to cut the strings.

* Avril Lavigne performs tonight at Phillips Arena in Atlanta.