***ALBUM OF THE MONTH | April 2020***
Fiona Apple
Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Epic
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Leave it up to Fiona Apple to tell us exactly what we need. “Fetch the bolt cutters,” she says, “I’ve been in here too long.”
It’s been eight years since her previous LP The Idler Wheel… (2012) and there’s no doubt in my mind she’s been working on Fetch The Bolt Cutters for even longer. Long before its title would take on an entirely new meaning she never could have intended, long before the pandemic and our accompanying quarantine. The album rollout was originally scheduled for October, but she couldn’t wait that long. Sometimes you have to get something off your chest. And since we’re all at home facing demons every day, Apple knew that now’s the time.
Apple told New York Magazine she hopes the record brings people stuck inside—whether or not they’re in a happy place—some comfort. “It’s about breaking out of whatever prison you’ve allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it.”
The tone of control in her voice is stronger than ever. Fiona Apple’s music has always been about control. In the beginning when eye makeup, hairstyles, and quotes were chosen for her in magazines, the power of her music and its melodic poetry spoke to those of us only listening to the records. Fiona Apple with her hands on a piano is the authority in the room. Power lies in the hops, skips, and jumps her voice can take from one emotion to another, even in their gasps and pitter patters.
Apple has made five records in 24 years and more control was gained at every turn, every year we had to wait. Fetch The Bolt Cutters was recorded at home in Apple’s Venice Beach bungalow. She worked on the record for as long or as little as she wanted. When she makes a mistake, she lets herself take a breath and laugh, and now we can hear that part too. Turns out if we leave Fiona Apple alone long enough, and teach her how to use GarageBand, she’ll tell us what she’s been unable to for years.
In addition to her credit as a percussionist on eight of the thirteen tracks, Apple co-produced Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Her signature piano and vocals are present, but they lay more in the background, leaving space for stomping, shouting, chimes, hand claps, and a clattering of every kind of drum, plus a Casio. Fetch The Bolt Cutters is a loud call to attention and call to action.
Apple’s narrative here is about getting out to let others in. The stories and rhymes she spits are about other women. There’s sisterhood (“Newspaper”), an anti-jealousy anthem (“Ladies”), and seeing yourself in other women because it happened to you, too (“For Her”). So many women are here, more than just her grade school acquaintance “Shameika.” You will probably recognize yourself, or someone you know, in these lines.
The Idler Wheel… is an insular look at the self, a collection of songs that investigate where she went wrong (“Daredevil,” “Every Single Night”), where she begs us to be “Left Alone.” Now Apple is 42, and long grown from the teenager who wrote “Criminal” and “Slow Like Honey.” On Bolt Cutters, Apple knows herself better than ever.
“I’ve been sucking in so long,” she sings on “Heavy Balloon,” “that I’m bustin’ at the seams.”
“Kick me under the table all you want,” she sings on “Under The Table,” “I won’t shut up.”
And its chorus: “I would beg to disagree but begging disagrees with me.”
“For Her” sticks with me the most: “you raped me in the bed your daughter was born in.” It’s almost to the tune of the 1952 tap classic “Good Morning” from Singing In The Rain, which pushes it deeper into the wound. The selection of words, their violence and birth, the possessive force—in under three minutes! Apple no longer implies. She names, yells, and refuses to let you look away.
She also doesn’t let the songs return to how they began. There are so many moving parts, shifts, changes, and barely any bridges. The songs are surprising and engaging, just like the act of acceptance itself. Who knows what you’ll find.
Apple explained to The New Yorker that she collects words on index cards. There are countless takes until it’s right. She lives for the moment of perfection of “letting the words glide down the back of my throat.” Everything on Fetch The Bolt Cutters is a command. Her focus and devotion has harnessed that potential Shameika was telling her about.
The harsh hits of sounds in the album’s title—the sounds F, T, and CH make in your mouth, right at the front, the slam of the word “bolt,” the graphic action “cutter”—is my favorite part. It’s a collection of sounds made by someone who pays attention to every syllable and shape the mouth can make. Its precision has already decided for you: you’re getting out. Within 24 hours this record already went down in history as many things: a masterpiece, a feminist manifesto, a love letter to women everywhere. It might not be forever remembered as Fiona Apple’s Quarantine Record—it’s so much more than that—but it’s extremely hard to ignore.
“The whole house is the recording room,” she told New York. “I moved into this house in 2000, and I’ve always felt like [it] doesn’t want me to go anywhere. So I’m like, ‘All right, I’m going to give you what you want, house. I know you deserve to be the record.’”
What a perfect story for fans and critics everywhere, alone together. Its timing is cosmic. Maybe we all needed to be at home in order to hear the power an empty space can have. The confines of her home freed Fiona Apple and she’s showing us there’s a way out for all of us (even if we’re stuck inside).
Notable Tracks: “Cosmonauts” | “For Her” | “Newspaper” | “Rack of His” | “Under the Table”
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