- For someone who’s always been a couple of steps away from being legit certifiable, Fiona Apple is extraordinarily resilient. That’s most true of her musical output and if the relentless truth telling she uses it as a vehicle for is accurate, as a person too.
Her last album, 2012’s epically titled The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, was actually a work that exhibited both great personal fragility, even as it roared out in defiance of her failings. Often troubled and an extraordinarily private person, Apple even managed to get out on tour with a record that was, justifiably lionised as one of the best of her career. I was extraordinarily angry to discover that, a little way into the tour, one of the many out-of-control-Sheriffs roaming the deep south, pulled over her tour bus and arrested her over a dime-bag of weed they found. What better way to send one of music’s most sensitive personalities scuttling back to her home, never to emerge again?
Emerge she has, however, sounding even more defiant on the aptly titled Fetch The Boltcutters. Opener, I Want You To Love Me, is, in some ways, deceptively sweet. It’s a kind of a mea culpa to her lover and a prayer for everything to have -as much it’s possible in real life- a happy ending. It’s still Fiona Apple and the gorgeous piano gets almost drowned out by fiercely buzzing, libidinal strings in the background. Discordant notes trouble the promises of love and domestic bliss, injecting a bit of reality into this ode to love; not to mention the bizarre dolphin noises which she chokes out for a finish - don’t even care to guess at whatever psychological statement is being made there.
Next Apple heads back to high-school on Shameika and reminiscing about the first, faltering notions she had of a career in music. Like much of the record, despite using much of the same instrumentation as its first, sweet notes, the music drives forward, percussive and extremely forceful, supporting lyrics that are part diatribe but also a manifesto for trying to make it as an unconventional woman who’s going to make it whatever bull**** you might throw at her. It segues easily into the album’s title track and its signature political statement, which personifies the horrors of the music business -at least some of which hint at dark sexual politics- in the figure of some self-important and entitled, powerful man. It slowly, precisely lays out all the things Apple has learned, the hard way. It also beats out a rough, almost desperate plan for the future: “I thought being black-listed would be grist for the mill / Until I realised, I’m still here / I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill / Shoes that were not made for running up that hill / And I need to run up that hill, I need to run up that hill, I will x5 / Fetch The boltcutters, I’ve been here too long…”
Again, it’s Fiona Apple and the middle of the record features her defending inappropriate outbursts at dinner parties (Under The Table), further troubling that domestic bliss she was planning back at the beginning of the record. The lyrics are consistently powerful and defiant, feeling like they’re more important than the music and that's true of much of what's here.
Relay grits out the karmic knots we get tied up in, trying not to be furious at all the idiots who lack self-awareness: “Evil is a real life sport when the one who’s burnt turns to pass the torch.” A lot of the middle of the record repeats the blurring of the lines, yelling at the music industry and also, at the same time, some, shadowy, unnamed but significant male other. See cuts like Rack Of His and Newspaper for evidence. Just once or twice it slips into pure break-up territory, like the very circumspect and jazzy, but still heartbroken Ladies, seeming to betray the furious hope that Apple began with; or perhaps her clear-eyed perspective just supersedes it.
There are some great cuts hidden down the back of Fetch The Boltcutters. Heavy Balloon harnesses Apple's burgeoning fierceness like no other cut on the record; “I spread like strawberries / I climb like peas and beans / I been sucking it in so long / That I’m busting at the seams.” It also takes advantage of a creeping vocal fry, tiredness in Apple’s voice which I haven’t heard before. It’s a shame to hear, but she turns it into a rough and ready musical virtue. Another great number: it’s great to hear the spiritual style that was such a win on The Idler Wheel; the sub-three-minute For Her plays like the best work of Tuneyards and is begging to be a completely hardass single.
Fetch The Boltcutters is a fierce and propulsive transformation of past woes into a burning desire for the future. It’s been so long since Ani DiFranco smashed through into the general consciousness I’m not sure how many people remember her. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple does, however,because this record channels the same, unstoppable self-awareness and desire for change. If it lacks the sweet tragedy of The Idler Wheel, it just doesn’t care; Fiona Apple is coming through, you better not get in the way.
- Chris Cobcroft.