Last year Alanis Morissette took a break from working on her new album ? not to release seven volumes of existentially tortured self-confessional transcendental poetry, as you might expect, but to record a mock serious take on The Black Eyed Peas' 'My Humps'. As hilarious as it was unexpected, the spoof and accompanying video revealed a playfulness and sense of humour entirely lacking from her previous music. It was like discovering Angelina Jolie hates children.

But the comedy didn't last long ? with the release of 'Flavours of Entanglement', 'Weird Al' Yankovic can breathe easy once more. Opening with the lines "I start up in the north / I grow from special seed / I sprinkle it with sensibility / from French and Hungarian snow / I linger in the sprouting until my engine's full", it's vintage Morissette.

Pensive and typically self-absorbed instead, this collection has Morissette longing for her lover on the quiet 'Torch'; beating on herself for the breakup (the sombre 'Tapes'); and tentatively facing the world on her own on the pained 'Not As We'.

But you can't keep this woman down. She reiterates her independent spirit by taking a timeout from relationships over the ambient drum 'n bass of 'Moratorium'; kisses off the bickering partner on the Goldfrapp electro tune 'Straitjacket'; documents her return to the light on the gloriously sunny 'Giggling Again For No Reason'; and proclaims "one day I will be healed" on 'Incomplete'.

And even though the supposed former infatuation junkie is still scratching at the same scars ? you'd have thought by now that all prospective boyfriends had been frightened off by the risk of being immortalised in song ? Guy Sigsworth's slick, inventive production ensures Morissette's latest has a freshness apt for an album that ends with hopes of new beginnings.