Alanis Morissette: Sweeping Beauty.

Under Rug Swept is in stores on February 25.

It’s now been eight years since a twenty-year-old Alanis Morrissette released her gargantuan Jagged Little Pill long player. The album would go on to sell more than thirty million copies, and more than established the Toronto, Canada native as an international superstar.

Morissette first gained a music-publishing contract at age 14 after making her acting debut on the children’s TV program You Can’t Do That On Television. After releasing a self-financed single, she picked up a recording deal and released two albums that established her musically in her home country. Following her musical reinvention with Jagged Little Pill and an extensive and exhausting world tour, Morissette took time away from music prior to the 1999 release of her follow up album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie.

And now, after yet another extended absence from music Alanis is back with her new disc Under Rug Swept. Not that she’s been totally out of the public eye. Appearances have included a cameo role as God in Kevin Smith’s bitingly funny Dogma and performances in the off Broadway production The Vagina Monologues.

“I think back to the Judy Garland days and the days when people used to act and dance and sing and direct and they used to do everything,” Morissette explains on her new sense of the entertainer. “That to me is the fantasy.”

Then there’s been the production of the about to be released new album Under Rug Swept.

“Under Rug Swept, the record itself and the title is basically talking about my not wanting to sweep certain truths and certain stories under the proverbial rug and hide from them and not be in denial about them anymore. That’s kinda the crux where all these songs came from.”

“I just think it’s all really great. I’m not overly precious about it. The last few years have been incredible, evolving and expressing and imploding and all of that. Life has been really colorful so far and I have every reason to believe that it’ll continue to be that way.

While her first two Debbie Gibson-esque albums, 1990s Alanis and 1992s Now Is The Time have, much like Tori Amos’ embarrassing debut Y Kant Tori Read, both now been deleted from print, Alanis continues to evolve as a performer.

“Songwriting feels like home to me now. It now feels familiar, whereas at one point, the stream of consciousness element of it and the channeling element of it were overwhelming. Now it really feels wonderfully familiar.”

“Just the passion. Whether it’s a passionate anger or it’s a passionate curiosity or any other major emotion or feeling. Just being alive is inspiring in itself, so I’m pretty much always wanting to write.”

Considering the media sledging she took after the release of her single Ironic for misusing the word, Morissette continues to follow her own lyrical path.

“I’m not really mindful of anything while I’m writing, but I think when it comes time to decide which songs, I’m mindful of the fact that I’m communicating. Certainly when I’m producing, the goal is to communicate. So if there’s a lyric that needs to be literally brought up in the mix or whatever it is, I’ll do that because I’m aware of the fact that it’s a conversation of sorts. But while I’m writing, I’m not thinking about anything other than what needs to come out.”

Are you comfortable with the ‘role model’ tag?

“Yeah, it’s amazing. I also know that they are there for themselves too. I feel like I’m in the audience as much as they may feel like they are. I feel like I’m watching them just as much.”

“I feel that if I take care of myself and I have compassion for myself, then I am happy to know that there may be a thirteen year old young woman, or a ninety five year old man or whatever, look to that as something to remind them or validate their own self care.”

With the release of Under Rug Swept come rumours of a possible third Australian visit later in the year.

“I’m coming back to Australia I think in the spring,” she teases. “And then to Asia at some point as well, although I’m not exactly sure when, but between now and the end of summer 2002 I’ll be travelling around the world.”

“An Australian man lived with us in Canada for three or four years in our house, so I came to quickly realise that Australians and Canadians have some sort of simpatico thing going. It’s good.”