An Apple a Day
ISSUE #101
Fiona Apple only releases one album a decade, and she just delivered a new one last night. Fetch the Bolt Cutters completely derailed any plans I had for this issue. So I held an emergency summit, and after twelve hours of listening, I assigned my seven immediate favorites to each day of the week—it doesn't have to make sense.
This risks seeming sycophantic—a man writing so zealously about Fiona—but I do relate to her songs as a severe depressive with a heart that can take my whole day hostage. If you'll buy that American men are only allowed emotion through music, her songs are bottomless reservoirs where I can drink. She draws a picture of anguish and rage so precise that some of us can recognize it as a mirror.
It can't be overstated how deft Apple is with words. Her lyrics are never affectations, never strained or overwrought. These are verses you could find if you opened any of our high school spiral notebooks. She speaks to a version of self we can't reach anymore, sings over the grave of memory until we find the strength to dig.
This may very well be the part of her that keeps some people away, I guess the same way male film critics wouldn't review Little Women because they couldn't relate or whatever shit. Hers is more than just lyrical genius though—it's musical naturalism, drum sets in open living rooms, pots and pans and the barking of dogs. She knows exactly where to put the mic to let the percussion shake us to our senses.
It's the kind of album that makes you want to lie down and listen with the lyric booklet (find them here, along with the stories as told to the masterful Rachel Handler). She routinely changes tone and direction at the back end of an album—she excels at guiding us from a beginning to an end. Obviously, the album should be listened to in its entirety; I just reframed it this way to fit the punny title, and because I have to do one of these every week, like it or not. Here's my day-to-day guide to my favorite tracks:
MONDAY | Drumset
TUESDAY | Heavy Balloon
WEDNESDAY | Ladies
THURSDAY | Rack of His
FRIDAY | Under the Table
SATURDAY | I Want You to Love Me
SUNDAY | Cosmonauts