This from Toronto's largest newspaper; I thought we were supposed to
have love for our fellow Canadians? Huh. Guess not. Honestly...The
globe isn't usually this bitchy.
Avril's latest: Only the best damn thing if you're 14
The Globe and Mail
The Best Damn Thing is not the worst damn thing, but it is a calculated
thing -- a shallow, callow, unrefreshing thing. Avril Lavigne, the
sassy-imp pop
creation from Napanee, Ont., is a 22-year-old married woman posing as a
child and performing to an audience that counts training bras and braces
for their
teeth as their year's eventful acquisitions. Add the new album from
Lavigne to the list, and now the pink, sparkly cellphones really begin
to squeal.
The material is mostly fun and frivolous, a fact the singer readily
admits. "My last record had songs that were, like, so literal," she told
USA Today,
referring to 2004's Under My Skin. "This record isn't a serious diary.
It's not even really about anything I'm going through right now."
What she's going through these days is married life with Sum 41's Deryck
Whibley, her new husband, with whom she shares a newly purchased
$9.5-million L.A.
mansion. Are there tunes about her man? "I have a couple of, whatever --
love songs, or whatever you want to call them," Lavigne said. Yes,
Avril, the
resolute Keep Holding On is what we call a love song.
You wouldn't know that the Complicated singer is involved in a mature
relationship, not with songs (written with the help of professional
tunesmiths) that
have her bashing boys, being bratty and looking for catfights down at
the mall. On the drummy, driving first single,
Girlfriend (with the cheerleading Hey Mickey
beat), Lavigne is full of herself. "She's like so whatever," sings
Lavigne, in bitch mode. "You could do so much better."
Like Girlfriend, the following I Can Do Better comes swift with tom-toms
and expletives deleted, with our helium-voiced heroine giggling and
growling to
an old Billy Idol riff. The acoustic strummed intro of the pop-rocking
Runaway sounds familiar as well; here, Lavigne is having a bad day. The
title track
is a swirl of fun, with a highly confident star (oddly employing a faux
Brit accent) cheered on by that pom-pom squad again: Give us an "A,"
give us a
"V."
Give us a break, which is what we have with the strings and sobs of When
You're Gone
and the piano-serious Innocence, with its Sarah McLachlan-like vocal
nuances. But we're back to merriment on the hip hop and punk lite of I
Don't Have to
Try, with its fast churn and choir of backup-singing chipmunks. Lavigne
is fun and assertive, telling her boy that she's the one who knows the
dance and
she's the one who wears the pants. "Don't you disagree, 'cause you know
it's all about me."
Is it all about Avril? Of course it is -- she's the scene, she's the
drama queen. Is she having fun with her bratty, spit-at-the-photographer
reputation?
You would suppose so. Is this album of any interest to any listener over
14? Probably not. Does that even matter? No, it doesn't mean a damn thing.
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