Avril Lavigne, Head Above Water, album review: Still searching for a musical identity

Avril Lavigne has suffered from a few identity crises over the years. There was the literal one, of course – a semi-serious internet conspiracy insisting that she had died and been secretly replaced by a body double. And then there was the musical one. For Lavigne, the struggle to evolve beyond her early Noughties pop-punk era – when tween girls across the world played the boisterous, angst-ridden Let Go (2002) on repeat, and wore poorly fastened ties in her honour – was the real test.

She stumbled several times. There was the playful but ill-fitting 2007 single “Girlfriend”, 2011 album Goodbye Lullaby – which couldn’t decide whether to be glossy or gutsy – and who could forget the heinous, vaguely appropriative 2013 single “Hello Kitty”? Try as she might, Lavigne has never surpassed, nor shaken off, the legacy of Let Go. “You know you’re not fooling anyone when you become somebody else,” she sang on that album’s magnum opus “Complicated”. She should have listened to her own advice.

But her sixth album, Head Above Water, arrives promising authenticity – with a somewhat concerning insistence. “This is me and my fight,” said Lavigne ahead of its release. “This album tells my story.” A press release announced: “You’re hearing the songstress as she was always meant to sound,” before detailing the 34-year-old’s life-threatening battle with Lyme disease. A near-death experience led to the album’s title track, a rocky, orchestral number that wouldn’t be out of place on The Greatest Showman soundtrack (which I mean as a compliment). “It was a very spiritual experience,” recalled Lavigne of the song’s traumatic origins. “Lyrics flooded through me from that point on.”

The album is certainly more elegant than the offerings of the past decade, and Lavigne’s voice reaches new heights too – particularly on “I Fell in Love With the Devil”, an ominous, tightly crafted rumination on toxic relationships. “It Was In Me” is an earnestly delivered self-empowerment anthem, and “Birdie” has a potent beat and appealing melody, even if its lyrics are a little insipid: “Birdie fly away, I ain’t your prisoner, you can’t chain me down no more.”

There are missteps. “Dumb Blonde”, with its military drum rolls and bold, atonal bridge, is Little Mix-lite, while “Love Me Insane” and “A Bigger Wow” are as forgettable as their titles are grammatically infuriating

Lavigne might not have found a musical identity that truly becomes her, but Head Above Water is an effective, and occasionally affecting, album. Besides, “everyone’s got an opinion, but I don’t care,” she sings on “It Was In Me” ­– so what does it matter what I think?