Exclusive Review from CDNOW
Meredith Brooks
Deconstruction
(Capitol)
Whether Meredith Brooks' career-defining 1997 hit "Bitch" was an edgy ode to
female empowerment or, more likely, a faux-Alanis ode to divadom dressed up as
a feminist manifesto, depended on how you looked at it. For better or worse,
Brooks' varied, spottily engaging follow-up, Deconstruction, contains nothing
likely to engender the same sort of polarizing response.
Here, Brooks rails against more obvious evils like materialism, societal
fissures, and religious insincerity with an alarming, if sometimes caustic,
earnestness. She isn't the first artist to become famous and promptly want to
start helping people (hello, Jewel), and this is as bad an idea as it ever was.
It's unsurprising that Brooks is at her finest during Deconstruction's handful
of simple, wistful love songs: She handles the almost Shania Twain-like light
country of "Nobody's Home" nicely, acquits herself equally well with the loping
"I Have Everything" and the groove-intensive, Luscious Jackson-reminiscent "All
For Nothing," and holds up her end of the funky Queen Latifah collaboration
"Lay Down" with aplomb.
Brooks fares far worse during Deconstruction's frequent stabs at social
consciousness, like "Careful What You Wish For," a by-now de rigeur swipe at
sudden fame. She seems utterly at sea during the punchy, teeth-grindingly bad
"Cosmic Woo Woo," which takes aim at late 1990s henna-tattooed, fast-food
spirituality. It's a noble, if not exactly novel, sentiment that Brooks
promptly runs into the ground.
Though admittedly, most of Deconstruction isn't as preachy as it could have
been, its now-that-I'm-famous-I-have-much-to-teach-you vibe recollects Alanis
Morissette in ways that even Brooks might not find flattering.
Allison Stewart
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