Avril Lavigne Under My Skin CD - Import

The Japanese special-edition release features an additional track and a NTSC-formatted, Region 2 DVD with videos, concert footage, and more.

While Avril Lavigne's 2002 debut, LET GO, arrived amidst a tidal wave of teen female performers, the 17-year-old Canadian singer/songwriter managed to distinguish herself with a punk-rock attitude tempered by a hooky pop sensibility. Lavigne's sound reached a remarkably wide audience, even inspiring indie-rock icon Liz Phair to openly pattern her next record after it.

With her 2004 follow-up, UNDER MY SKIN, Lavigne makes it clear which side of the pop-rock precipice she's standing on. Instead of pop producers such as the Matrix, Lavigne aligns herself with Our Lady Peace frontman Raine Maida and Linkin Park producer Don Gilmore. The result is a much more complex record--an angst-ridden, soul-searching album that rocks with fury without losing a keen ear for melody. This is clear from the outset with the brooding, lushly orchestrated, guitar-driven opening track "Take Me Away." However, while the music has significantly matured, Lavigne's lyrics still possess the same sense of teenage confusion and frustration so charming on her debut. UNDER MY SKIN is an impressive step for the young songwriter, and it effectively transcends the teen-pop label she inevitably received with her first record.

Part of Avril Lavigne's appeal -- a large part of it, actually -- is that she's a brat, acting younger than her 17 years on her 2002 debut, Let Go, and never seeming like she much cared about the past (she notoriously mispronounced David Bowie's name when reading Grammy nominations), or anything for that matter. She lived for the moment, she partied with sk8er bois, she didn't want anything complicated, and she sang in a flat, plain voice that illustrated her age as much as her silly, shallow lyrics. Those words got disproportionate attention because they were so silly and shallow, but most listeners just didn't care because, thanks to producer gurus the Matrix, they were delivered in a shiny package filled with incessant, nagging hooks -- a sound so catchy it came to define the mainstream not long after Let Go hit the radio. The Matrix became ubiquitous on the strength of their work with Lavigne, who herself became a big star, earning constant play on radio and MTV, kick starting a fashion trend of ties-n-tank tops for girls and inexplicably providing a touchstone for indie rock queen Liz Phair's mainstream makeover. Fame, however, didn't pull the two camps together; it pushed them their separate ways, as the Matrix went on to record their own album and Avril decided to turn serious, working with a variety of co-writers and producers, including fellow Canadian singer/songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, for her second album, 2004's Under My Skin. Lavigne hasn't only shed her trademark ties for thrift-shop skirts, she's essentially ditched the sound of Let Go too, bringing herself closer to the mature aspirations of fellow young singer/songwriter Michelle Branch. Since Avril is still a teenager and still a brat, it's livelier than Branch. Even when it sags under minor keys and mid-tempos, it's fueled on teen angst and a sense of entitled narcissism, as if she's the first to discover the joys of love and pain of heartache. In a sense, she comes across as Alanis Morissette's kid sister, especially now that the Matrix are gone and the hooks have been pushed to the background for much of the record; it's the teen spin on Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, where she's self-consciously trying to grow as an artist. Naturally, this means that Under My Skin is less fun than Let Go since there's nothing as giddy as "Sk8er Boi," even if much of it is written from a similarly adolescent vantage. Lavigne's collaborators, Kreviazuk and Evan Taubenfeld chief among them, have helped streamline her awkward writing, and her performances are also assured, which almost makes up for the thinness of her

Japanese limited editiRolling Stone (p.84) - 3 1/2 stars out of 5 - "What hasn't changed is her meticulous deliver....No one conjures up bored teenage blankness like Avril Lavigne."
Q (p.103) - 4 stars out of 5 - "UNDER MY SKIN doesn't disappoint..."