Happy 10th Anniversary to Fiona Apple’s fourth studio album The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, originally released in the UK June 18, 2012 and in the US June 19, 2012.
I. “Every single night…I endure the fright.”
This opening couplet comes courtesy of Fiona Apple McAffee-Maggart, better known as Fiona Apple professionally. Miss Apple will be your sleep-deprived tour guide along this wild ride. It begins at a bell-piano-assisted twisted lullaby. It finishes on tribal drums and flaming knives.
As for me, I watched 1978’s Invasion of the Bodysnatchers for the first time, at 2 AM Saturday night. In retrospect, this wasn’t the wisest choice, but it is now a memorable one. And while wrestling the awake-while-dreaming-about-sleeping demons that insomnia can bring, might as well create an indelible memory when under its wing. The “little-wings of white-flamed Butterflies in my brain” as Miss Apple might say.
“IIIIiiiiii just wanna feeleeleleel ev-ery-thing.” We feel you, Fi. Being able to feel, for an artist, is a necessary evil. Staying alert means staying alive, creatively. Bob Dylan famously said “An artist has got to be careful never really to arrive at a place where he thinks he's at somewhere. You always have to realize that you're constantly in a state of becoming. As long as you can stay in that realm, you'll sorta be alright.”
But “every single night’s a fight” to keep that flame alight. “And every single fight’s alright.” Right?!? After this weekend, I see that octopus hat from “Every Single Night” in a new light. In Bodysnatchers, people falling asleep get replaced by identical alien duplicates, devoid of human emotion. In “Every Single Night,” our restless protagonist exists in a realm where pain becomes a second skeleton beneath the skin, but she still can’t fit the feelings in. Pick your poison.
II. “The Idler Wheel Is Wiser / Than the Driver of the Screw / and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More / Than Ropes Will Ever Do”
How can your fourth album, called all these words above, be your distant second-longest title? Fiona’s second album When the Pawn… (1999) trumps its length by sixty-seven words. Yes, I counted. That fun fact, along with solemnly delivering a line like “you didn’t see my Valentine…I sent it via pantomime” are both incredibly funny to me, whether or not anybody else, including even she, would actually agree. People might not immediately think Fiona Apple to be humorous, but you can’t reach this level of madcap poetical genius without engaging in ridiculousness. Is Bob Dylan funny? For those of us digging deeply enough into his shit, you’re goddamn right he is.
An idler-wheel, by definition, “is a wheel which serves only to transmit rotation from one shaft to another, in applications where it is undesirable to connect them directly.” For gear heads out there, that might mean crankshaft to camshaft on an automobile. For those like me who spent far less time underneath car hoods than sticking their nose in records, like RCA/Victor’s Nipper with His Master’s Voice, an idler-wheel connects the motor to the platter on a phonograph.
Fiona Apple grew up in Harlem NYC, re-locating to L.A. permanently at 22 after purchasing a Venice Beach home with early music money. To date, she has never owned a driver’s license. However, when it comes to helming full-length musical journeys, she’s five for five as of press time. Fiona may take a slower, more circuitous route to get there, but she’s always on time. This is the type of artist, as is Kendrick Lamar, far more likely to quit than release some wack shit.
III. “I could liken you to a werewolf / The way you left me for dead / But I admit that I provided a full moon / And I could liken you to a shark / The way you bit off my head / But then again, I was waving around a bleeding open wound”
Those razor-sharp, cutting-on-both-sides lines—from the achingly beautiful “Werewolf”—are ostensibly about a past relationship. But they could also be a stand-in analogy for Fiona’s relationship with the music industry, following her meteoric rise from piano prodigy to multi-platinum pop star by 18. Or surmise the self-contained peace she had reached by the time of this 2012 I-survived-my-roaring-twenties-in-the-quicksand-collapse-of-the-record-industry release. Any of these, and likely a few others, work perfectly.
Even if things might’ve felt more fraught than fleeing volcanic expulsion from Dante’s Peak then, time allows for an appreciation of knowledge gained thru experience and fans the flame of fond memories in mind. It wasn’t only you; it was probably also me. Good luck in your future endeavors, while tossing up the deuce and saying P-E-A-C-E. “We can still, support each other, all we got to do is avoid each other” she sings in mid-chorus wistfully, before ending on the sweetly delivered echoing epiphany, “There’s nothing wrong when a song ends on a minor key.” Whether as a statement on the aforementioned themes, or a sly winking reference to her persistent piano-chord preference, we agree.
IV. “I’m a tulip in a cup…I stand no chance of growing up”
The Fame Monster pops up in Fiona’s early public profile among the masses like a series of nostalgic That’s So 90’s flashes: the ’97 MTV speech at a VMA podium, some high-profile early relationships (David Blaine, Paul Thomas Anderson), the barely-legal “Criminal” clip waif bait in the tub that generated creepy public leering among admirers like Howard Stern and Marilyn Manson, the smash Pleasantville soundtrack cover of The Beatles’ “Across The Universe” with accompanying black-and-white diner video, a legendary Rolling Stone cover story back when that publication still held major weight in ‘98.
By the time she walked offstage at Roseland Ballroom during a sold-out February 2000 set hampered by sound issues, she’d grown weary of the music-industry hamster-wheel. Meanwhile a vocally finicky, increasingly more platformed subset of press and public started souring on Fiona’s lack of fealty in the face of all these perks the glamourous life is advertised to provide.
A two-year hiatus from writing, recording, or performing ensued. Then after returning to begin working on her third album Extraordinary Machine, a public dust-up perceived to be between Fiona Apple and “the machine” began, in the mid-seventies Pink-Floydian sense. This album would go on to be written, recorded, produced, tinkered with, then recorded all over again, re-produced by someone else, at some point shelved, and even became the subject of a protested-for release by picketers with “FREE FIONA” signs outside Sony/BMG headquarters. Finally, some kind of agreement was reached between all parties, which allowed it to be unleashed on the streets, like a C-section at the end of a three-year overdue pregnancy.
V. “And now I’m hard, too hard to know / I don’t cry when I’m sad anymore no no / Tears calcify in my tummy / Fears coincide with the flow / How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?”
What’s fact or fiction about the hullabaloo surrounding Fiona’s career in the mid-aughts doesn’t much matter anymore. What was then fodder has since become folklore. Teenage-Angst-Era Fiona would have taken a flame-thrower to the place. 30-year-old Fiona, following what will likely be her last Gold-or-Platinum album, handled it with considerably more grace.
Publicly she was effusive in her gratitude for fans, yet careful not to fire shots across the bow at anyone still aboard the record business’ sinking ship. Her new aim became avoiding a mess and maintaining her ability to work again. By 2009, the only acts left selling multi-millions were: Rehab Anthem Era Eminem, Mid Country/Pop Transformation Taylor Swift, Britain’s Got Talent Overnight Opera Sensation Susan Boyle, and Died-in-June Michael Jackson. By then, she knew better than to expend energy trying to run with any of them.
The Idler Wheel… represents Fiona Apple’s biggest pivot point. The process of its formation began in her Venice home, around her innermost circle, or often, alone. The actual recording was done in secret, without her record company knowing. It was done before they knew work on it had begun. This was a onetime prodigy turned veteran finding the new workable solution. That alone makes its execution the biggest step yet in her musical evolution. The last body of work we heard before this one was written between ages 22 to 25. A lot of living was done between. While she always wrote all music and lyrics herself, this is the first album with Fiona Apple officially captaining her own production team.
Gone from these proceedings are super-producer/collaborator Jon Brion or Dr. Dre protégé Mike Elizondo. You will not hear Matt Chamberlain nor Questlove’s crashing drums on this album. This is a DIY record closer aligned by vibe with Springsteen’s Nebraska (1982) or I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside: An Album by Earl Sweatshirt (2015) than prior, more lush productions. While vocally pirouetting around on the killer-closer “Hot Knife” with a line about CinemaScope screens, this album is closer to the sonic equivalent of being captured in Super 8. It’s a decidedly scaled-down affair. The sounds of a preternaturally gifted singer/songwriter/musician, becoming a self-possessed song artisan. The vocals are pushed way up front, when not interrupted by piano stabs. While some homemade percussive clashes, or perhaps neighborhood kids shouting across the street, might play the back.
In the decade since The Idler Wheel’s release, it’s become a brand-new blueprint, imbued with hard-earned confidence. Everything that’s followed since, including 2020’s Fetch The Bolt Cutters—the most acclaimed album (98/100) by critical aggregating metrics since Metacritic started keeping track in ’99—uses this as a road map.
For our sleepless siren who told us she “don’t go to sleep to dream” at 17, then later dreamed to sleep, enjoy some well-deserved rest. Take any amount of time deemed necessary, before attempting to create another classic, to make it six straight out the gate. Or even feel free to skip it and just relax, down-shifting gears into idle, while rounding out the victory lap. More than damn near anyone still rolling along in the world of song, this is an artist who has earned that. But if or when doing so, try keeping one eye open, so the soul can remain un-snatched.
Enjoyed this article? Read more about Fiona Apple here:
Tidal (1996) | When The Pawn… (1999)
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