I am not a music critic. By any means. Let me make that very clear.

But, I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before that I am a long-standing Alanis Morissette fan. As such, I went out of my way to go to Starbucks to buy her new CD this morning. (I favor local shops over Starbucks. Also, there’s something special about buying the physical CD and popping it directly into my CD player, rather than downloading it from iTunes. Alanis is pretty much the only artist I do this for.)

My first reaction was that I like this album, Flavors of Entanglement, more than previous work from Alanis. I’ve always liked a gem here or there – “Eight Easy Steps” from So Called Chaos and “Flinch,” “21 Things I Want in a Lover” and “Hands Clean” from Under Rug Swept and “Unprodigal Daughter” and “Simple Together” from Feast on Scraps. Gone are the Jagged Little Pill days when I wore the CD out from overuse.

It has been well-documented that Alanis penned this album in the days after her broken engagement to Van Wilder himself, Ryan Reynolds. And so the idea has been that she’d return to the rage of “You Oughta Know,” easily one of the best anthems for the dumped in modern times. And, while she’d probably rather not have her melodrama from more than 10 years ago be the height of her career, I’m sure she recognizes that the song’s energy, rawness and lasting popularity give her the luxury of releasing the kind of albums she releases now – softer, more thoughtful at points, less likely to hit the Billboard 100. The tone and arrangement and pronouncement of her lyrics are awkwardly hers – I don’t know anyone else who uses odd terms like “accountable-less” and “focusless-ness.”

And maybe it is my foul mood or the fact that I finally just had enough and cried years worth of tears a few weeks back. But this CD? I like it … a lot.

I could see “Citizen of the Planet,” with its strong beats on my workout mix. The same goes for “Straitjacket.” Incidentally, I snorted when I heard the break up-inspired line, “I don’t know who you’re talking to with such f–cking disrespect.” Snorted. Out loud. Thankfully I was alone in the car.

And the slower, stripped down tracks, like “Not as We” and “Torch” are the gut wrenching songs of a woman in the midst of coming to terms with her ending relationship.

While I didn’t break up with my fiancé or anything crazy like that, I don’t find it tough to relate to the angst of some songs and the sadness of others. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to “declare a moratorium on things relationship”? Hell, I think I did that last week. Twice.

Perhaps the sweetest song and the one that speaks to me the most at this moment is “Incomplete,” which celebrates an idea that I should get behind – that being somewhat unfinished and still forming is where the true beauty lies. And so I’ve been listening to its calming tone all afternoon.

“I have been running so sweaty my whole life / Urgent for a finish line / And I have been missing the rapture this whole time / Of being forever incomplete.”

I’m going to stitch that on a sampler or something.