E-Mail This Article to a Friend The drama of the gifted young adult (continued)

Gone, for the most part, are Let Go producer Clif Magness’s sweetened acoustic-guitar strums; in comes heavier artillery courtesy of Don Gilmore, the producer behind Good Charlotte and Linkin Park. Former Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody co-wrote the gloomy "Nobody’s Home," and hard-rock song doctor Butch Walker is on board as both a co-writer and a producer (you can hear his influence on the Stone Temple Pilots–ish kick in the bridge of "My Happy Ending"). Let Go amounted to an adult-contemporary pop album disguised as skate punk (a trick so alluring that Liz Phair decided to give it a shot), and Under My Skin dutifully reprises its most successful formulas — "Don’t Tell Me" matches the moody verses and exhilarating chorus of "Complicated"; "My Happy Ending" picks up where "Sk8er Boi" left off. But they’re insurance policies that the rest of the album doesn’t require.

The rest of the disc incorporates everything from romper-room emo ("Freak Out") to gothic-metal dirges ("Take Me Away," "Forgotten") to bratty punk rock ("He Wasn’t," "I Always Get What I Want"). Avril puts her stamp on all these styles — if almost every song on the new disc sounds like a massive hit, that might be because what modern rock has needed (even more than, say, a brick to the face) is a woman’s touch. Nearly half the songs on Under My Skin — the ones that give the disc its most distinctive shapes — were written with Chantal Kreviazuk, a classically trained pianist turned singer-songwriter (and a fellow Canadian) in the Sarah McLachlan mold. Along with her husband, Our Lady Peace’s Raine Maida (who produced several songs and co-wrote "Fall to Pieces," the album’s lone, unabashed love song), Kreviazuk is a calming presence. On "Together," her glacial, cascading keyboard glissandos soften the corners of Gilmore’s detuned, depth-charge bass; the finished product is a hybrid — as heavy as Linkin Park and yet as weightless as Michelle Branch — that feels distinctly Avrilish.

With the exception of "Sk8er Boi," Avril’s live sets were, by necessity, down-tempo affairs. On her "Try To Shut Me Up" tour, she had to resort to a Green Day howler to crank up the energy level. Now she’s got a few of her own. Under My Skin’s punk tunes are both throwaways, but they both sound better than they need to. On "He Wasn’t," Avril makes her bid to become the next great American Teenage Rock and Roll Machine, and the only thing missing from the song’s early-Donnas romp is a sense of humor. (The lyric — "I’m getting bored, it’s getting late/What happened to my Saturday?" — is like Green Day’s "Welcome to Paradise" without a punch line.) On the other hand, the closing "I Always Get What I Want," so out of character that it’s credited as a bonus track, unleashes the spoiled brat within. "Gimme what I want!/’Cause I’m a big shot," she shouts over a four-chord, young-loud-and-snotty hardcore-speed onslaught, proving she’s not too precious to take a swing at herself.

Still, the reason it’s easy to believe that Avril’s taken over a larger share of the songwriting on Under My Skin is that so many of her lyrics are molten, unrefined bundles of hurt, confusion, and defiance. "I cannot find a way to describe it/It’s there, inside/All I do is hide," she sings on the opening "Take Me Away." On "Together": "When I close my eyes/Reality overcomes me/I’m living a lie." On "Forgotten": "Don’t patronize me!" Most of the songs are about boys who’ve done her wrong, though her lyrics are so generic that even "Slipped Away," a near-waltz that appears to be about a death in the family, could apply to almost anyone’s loneliness.

And yet Avril’s moistened, dew-drop delivery still conveys a specific intimacy: a lostness in a great void. It’s the feeling I imagine my daughter connecting with as she spins around our living room, and it’s the subject of Under My Skin’s most wrenching song, an eerie, vaporous ballad (think Sarah McLachlan’s "Hold On") called "How Does It Feel." Its lyrics, in contrast to everything before and after it, are simple and direct; Kreviazuk gives her the gift of a sparkling, momentary clarity. "I am young, and I am free," Av sighs, "but I get tired and I get weak." As the chorus hints that her rise to superstardom has tipped the emotional playing field of young love — "How does it feel to be/different from me?/Are we the same?" — a dark synth line frames an empty, lonesome space, and a shivering string section twirls away from her in slow motion. She sounds hopelessly fragile, yet she declares herself fearless: "I am small, and the world is big," she concludes, "but I’m not afraid of anything." If you believe her — believe that she occupies the void without fear — then it’s a brave song. And if you don’t quite believe her — if you picture her, adrift in song, a defiant 19-year-old wearing a mask of self-assurance that does not quite conceal her insecurity — well, it might be the most heartbreaking thing you’ve ever heard.

Avril Lavigne plays the KISS FM concert at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield this Saturday, May 22; call (617) 931-2000.