Fiona Apple Is Back And Rawer Than Ever
By Ikam Acosta
Our favorite little ‘Criminal,’ Fiona Apple, is back in the musical spotlight with her latest album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do.
Besides being more than a mouthful, Apple’s fourth album promises to center on her “unflinching honesty and her music’s role as a conduit for her truth.” Her songs have been described as raw and metaphors of bones and marrow have been used to describe the song lyrics Apple chooses for her self-excavation.
‘Every Single Night,’ a song off Apple’s new album, contains the following lyrics,
“That’s when the pain comes in/ Like a second skeleton/ Trying to fit beneath the skin.”
The song continues with the lyric,
“I just want to feel everything.”
It is this discomfort described in the first part, along with the curiosity and desire for emotional omnipresence that makes Fiona Apple‘s music so raw and honest. The Village Voice describes the album in the following manner,
“In a world of animated-GIF reaction shots and retweets turning human expression into a nuance-obliterating, endlessly self-cannibalizing, pop-culture-referencing semaphore system, Apple’s willingness (or maybe the correct word is need) to dig deep and pick the scabs, to excavate the black gunk that has settled at the bottom of one’s heart after so long, is a welcome shock.”
Other reviews of Fiona’s album also reference her raw, unapologetic nature. According to Pitchfork,
“She’s still here, brave enough to indulge in raw emotion and smart enough to make those feelings carry.”
The A/V Club simply describes the album as,
“Apple turns herself inside out.”
Spin magazine gave a pretty good synopsis of not just this album, it seems like, but of Fiona’s entire career. Spin said,
“You don’t want to live through this, per se, but there is something liberating about bearing witness to someone so unrepentantly f***ed-up; she is the martyr-saint, crucifying herself so that we might live dramz-free.”
Apple’s fourth album is considered to be her wackiest one to date. She kind of reminds me of Tori Amos‘ earlier works, where she makes random metaphors that don’t make sense, yet convey the perfect feeling within the song. In a recent interview, Apple shared how she was able to make The Idler Wheel sound so raw. She said,
“I wanted to make everything as stark as possible, so you could hear everything.”
Fiona has been out of the musical spotlight for a while now, but she seems to have dived in full-force. Apple shared,
“If I have one success in my relationship history it’s with the people who listen to my music. I think that they’ll be there with me forever, and I’ll be there with them forever. And I’m totally satisfied with that.”
What do you think about Fiona Apple’s new album?
