Spectreview: Fiona Apple – Fetch The Bolt Cutters

Fiona Apple’s fifth album is truly special.

-PEARL-

It’s hard to write about Fiona Apple’s fifth album when so much ink has already been spilled about it – so much ink, it seems, that it threatens to overshadow the achievements of the album itself. Chances are you already know what to expect from it, if you’ve been paying attention.

I’m an amateur writer, and I know who I am and where I stand. I don’t think I have anything more to add to the discussion. And after a few listens, I don’t know if it would be wise anyway.

So all I will say is that Fetch The Bolt Cutters is truly, actually, special. Upon its release I found myself in a rare moment: actively listening to it with my boyfriend like it was a movie, lyrics ready on my phone, as we sat transfixed by the power of her voice and of her poetry. Together we parsed what she meant, and what she was trying to say, and how often she succeeded in conveying thoughts and feelings that so few artists ever hope to achieve. We obsessed over the sound of it all; how musical such overwhelmingly percussive songs could be, how many moods Apple could convey, and how it all felt so natural to her, as if she wasn’t aware of how effortlessly she was reiterating what could be said through sound.

We reveled and savored privately, in our individual capacities; we wondered how many would do the same. And we mused on all the people who would reject it, who had already rejected it, perhaps without listening, for what it was or what it represented. It felt frustrating to acknowledge it: to feel a part of a world that, in its unerring cruelty, compels artists like Fiona Apple to forge works like this album. But then, ultimately, we felt lucky to have experienced it, so what does that say?

That’s all. Go listen. Anything else might ruin it for you.

Highly recommended.