AVRIL LAVIGNE
Let Go
Arista

As the bloom began to fade off Britney’s and N’Sync’s rose, naysayers went to work predicting the end of teen pop for good. But the bubble didn’t burst – it just transmuted into a new form, one in which the young acts took a cue from the music of their parents. They started to write their own stuff, and they started to play their own instruments, and they started to make music more sophisticated then the synthetic blips-and-blaps of the previous teen music upstarts (not that it’s necessarily bad; N’Sync’s “Pop” is one of the great recent pop songs).

Canada’s own Avril Lavigne is blonde, blue-eyed and 17, but don’t compare her with Britney Spears. Don’t compare her to Michelle Branch, either. Spunky and outgoing, Avril is a self-confessed skater punk who looks and acts like the kid sister to Sum 41 and travels with a back-up band that aspires to be Blink-182. The music on Let Go is brash and confident, the assured debut of a young woman who knows she’ll be going far.

Lavigne has an alto that vibrates from tremulously whisper to roaring cry to youthful pout. It’s an appealingly askew singing voice (her Canadian accent sometimes slips through), full of personality and vibrato. She’s a good singer and doesn’t sound like another musician.

Let Go begins with the steely, crashing “Losing Grip,” which comes down like a Pacific wave, and follows with her hit “Complicated.” The song is everything a radio-pop song should be: melodic, tuneful and sleek. The bopping, punky “Sk8r Boi” and the beatific “I’m With You” follow. The tune “Tomorrow,” which, like “I’m With You,” is a slow ballad, is fine, but sounds like a WB drama soundtrack selection. The rest of the album is really good, if a bit monochromatic.

Avril Lavigne’s album isn’t as successful all around as Branch’s The Spirit Room was. It isn’t as a gorgeously crafted or as perfectly harmonic. But it isn’t a Britney rip-off, and it isn’t bad.

– Johnny Donaldson