Alanis Morissette
Paul Wellman

Donning cropped hair and a glitter-fringed jacket, Alanis Morissette appeared at home on the Bowl stage on Thursday night, September 27. Her bedazzled attire affirmed her status as an alt-rock icon who’s been owning arenas since she was 21. The show started with a treat for anyone who first encountered her at that time: An equivocating intro gave way to the unmistakable, dissonant opening harmonica of “All I Really Want,” the first track on her 1995 breakout album, Jagged Little Pill.

Morissette went on to play almost all of Jagged Little Pill. Of note was her charged delivery of anguished album closer “Wake Up,” at the end of which she stepped aside to let her band shine. The entirety of her post-1995 discography was represented by eight songs, ranging from 1998’s chamber-tinged “Uninvited” to 2012’s “Woman Down.” The latter, which addresses “all woman haters” and speaks to the “[low] bar on the behavior [women] will take,” came across as a defiant statement just hours after Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee; Morissette had expressed support on social media.

Though Morissette was fighting off laryngitis, she pulled off an impassioned show. And though she may be seen as a largely nostalgic act, her songs’ openly vulnerable, pointedly gendered reflections don’t age in relevance or resonance.

Set List:

(1) “All I Really Want”

(2) “21 Things I Want in a Lover”

(3) “Forgiven”

(4) “Woman Down”

(5) “You Learn”

(6) “Perfect”

(7) “Guardian”

(8) “Right Through You”

(9) “Hand in My Pocket”

(10) “Everything”

(11) “So Pure”

(12) “Hands Clean”

(13) “Ironic”

(14) “You Oughta Know”

(15) “Wake Up”

Encore:

(16) “Uninvited”

(17) “Thank U”

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