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In February 2002, Alanis Morissette released Under Rug Swept, the album that contained one of her last hits, “Hands Clean,” repeated here in an acoustic format. She quickly embarked on her Toward Our Union Mended tour but couldn’t let this particular set of songs go. So just in time for the holiday season came Feast on Scraps a CD/DVD combo-pack that slapped an album of B-sides with a live performance.
I won’t be talking about the exhausting DVD, which clocks in at the complete 21 song setlist plus interludes of her and her band writing and recording the album and acting goofy between tour stops. This is purely about the collection of songs that was the major selling point for my high school devotee of Morissette’s diary-set-to-music style of pop/rock.
The annoying New Age platitudes that would engulf her music soon enough, like on tracks like “Out is Through” and “Excuses” on So-Called Chaos, are burbling here on “Offer” and “Sorry 2 Myself.” While her disquiet attitude about fame, a reoccurring theme on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, appears here on “Purgatorying,” and “Sister Blister” finds her reexamining her internalized misogyny and biases. Yet she’s consistently at her best when scaling back to look at matters of the heart, like on aching, vulnerable “Simple Together” or the raging “Bent for You.” Any of these tracks would’ve comfortably slide onto Under Rug Swept, and I frankly would’ve dropped “A Man” for nearly any of them.
While Feast on Scraps may not be an essential purchase for casual fan, it is a fun little glimpse into the breadth of material an artist can write for one album before winnowing the choices down to a manageable eleven or twelve. It remains worth mentioning just how “out there” Morissette is willing to put her interior emotional life on display for both recognition of the same in her listeners and processing through her art. Yes, it’s sometimes a pretentious slog, but growing up is tricky business regardless if you’ve sold millions of units as a nineteen-year-old or not.
DOWNLOAD: “Fear of Bliss”
