After the breakthrough debut of Jagged Little Pill, an album which earned four Grammys and spawned a dedicated worldwide fan base, Alanis Morissette remains not only an enduringly popular artist, but one whose success stems from a fierce commitment to authenticity and, to an equal extent, vulnerability. Both of these traits enable her to climb to new ground with her forthcoming album, Flavors of Entanglement, from Warner Bros. Records.

Serving as her newest sherpa guide is British electronica producer Guy Sigsworth (Björk, Imogen Heap), who co-wrote and produced the album with Morissette. Nearly two dozen songs were born from writing sessions in London and Los Angeles, a baker's dozen selected for the final cut of Flavors of Entanglement. While hewing to a familiar process -- creating songs as snapshots of her life -- Morissette found cathartic support during a big transition in her life. "I often write in retrospect, but this time all was written in real time," she says. "This record helped me through some fragile moments. Every song was like a life raft."

Her penchant for eclecticism, whether musical, spiritual or otherwise, brought new sounds and styles into this latest effort, her first original studio album in four years. Eastern percussion and strings blend with electronic hues in the opening track, "Citizen of the Planet," a poetic narrative of her life story and transnational perspective. Morissette's yin/yang view of the microcosmic self being evidenced in the macrocosmic world extends to lead single "Underneath," which reflects Mahatma Gandhi's notion that "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

While deconstructing human behavior in the jarring "Versions of Violence," Morissette offers a more personal take on being on the receiving end of crazy-making behavior with songs such as the hard-driving "Straitjacket," the hauntingly beautiful lost-love lament of "Torch," the clear declaration of "Moratorium," the hypnotic ebb and flow of "Tapes," and grateful in the aspirational "In Praise of the Vulnerable Man." Morissette explores the often cyclical nature of learning in tracks such as the pensive, rock bottom-capturing "Not As We," and the ecstatic freedom of "Giggling Again for No Good Reason," before wrapping with the Phoenix-rising closure of "Incomplete."

"There's not another artist-male or female-who can take you on the kind of emotional journey that Alanis can," says Sigsworth. "She has this ginormous, super-massive, planet-eating emotional range. She goes all the way-10 on the Richter Scale-and we're at the epicenter with her as she sings whole worlds into existence. She can be raging and hostile, distraught and desolately heartbroken, glowingly nostalgic, sensual, breezy and self-deprecating-all in one album."