Artist: Avril Lavigne
Album: Goodbye Lullaby
Release: March 8
Label: RCA Records
Grade: C+
Avril Lavigne – teenage outcast, turned gloomy rebel, turned punk-princess – is back with her latest incarnation, Goodbye Lullaby, returning as a woman finally ready to leave adolescence behind; at least according to her fourth studio album.
However, despite cosmetics' and nature's best effort, the 26-year-old Lavigne neither looks nor sounds a day older than the 17-year-old girl that burst onto the music scene almost a decade ago.
This time around, after a piano-driven prelude about her fragrance "Black Star," déjà-vu sets in on the second track, "What the Hell." This is the album's lead single, which talks about casual dating and playing the field, replicating the carnival-esque catchiness of her previous album's first single, "Girlfriend."
Everything after that, aside from the aptly titled up-tempo "Smile," is an introspective, mushy, and over-sentimental trip down memory lane about regrets, miscommunications, and reminiscences.
One can only imagine what the studio atmosphere was like with Lavigne's ex-husband Deryck Whibley, main singer of punk group Sum 41, producing six of the album's 14 songs. Breaking up is tough business, but turning the experience into an album is a harder endeavor.
Lavigne's brand of borderline-screaming pop-punk at times echoes the affecting intensity of My Chemical Romance or the emotional anguish of Dashboard Confessional, but mainly it threatens the territory of Simple Plan's high-pitched whininess.
When she is not spouting cliché-laden lyrics on tracks like "Push" or "Alice," Lavigne works the pop genre best by going acoustic, without slick production make-ups. Two of the better tracks on Goodbye Lullaby are "Wish You Were Here" and "Goodbye."
Devoid of the eager sincerity of Let Go, the passionate angst of Under My Skin, and the preppy outrageousness of The Best Damn Thing, Goodbye Lullaby strives for maturity by overstretching everywhere but getting nowhere.
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