Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a victorious display of the importance of self-examination
Words: Seeham Rahman
Until now, Fiona Apple has maintained her notoriety by deconstructing the repressed emotions and obstacles which come from the transition of adolescence to adulthood. Since her 1996 debut album Tidal, Apple has been brutally honest about her painful and cathartic experience growing up as a woman, and the unspoken issues of vulnerability. And while in the past, there was criticism mixed up in the praise for her narrative of iconoclasm, her return with Fetch the Bolt Cutters demonstrates her brutal honesty should only ever have been taken as a vicious strength.
Fiona Apple fans will not be disappointed by her long-awaited fifth album, delivered with little notice on April 17th, nearly eight years after her last. Maintaining the same aura of the Sad Girl model she created, Apple has stayed true to her emotionalism in her new album, tackling similar issues which shaped her previous albums: discussing the issues of outspokenness, sexual assault, difficult intimate relationships and the intricate inner workings of her mind. However, this time Apple takes on a certain daring power, emotionally straining, yet tackling these topics with a newfound self-worth. Each moment portrays a sharp story of how Apple is handling her own and the world’s trauma, speaking to listeners who are likely to have endured similar. From the braggadocio and piercing tone of the title track, a song about freeing oneself from that which damages them, to the deepness in timbre in the bass of ‘Heavy Balloon’, reflecting the hindering weight of mental illness, Apple makes it clear that this record is a conversation on bad behaviour – between listeners, ex-lovers, survivors and those who come and go.
This solace in rawness has produced songs with a more intimate and direct feel; moving away from her neatly produced, piano-heavy beginnings, to songs which are blemished and aggressively cathartic. In ‘Relay,’ she is candid about her spiralling rage, singing “I resent you for presenting your life, like a fucking propaganda brochure”, emphatically rejecting her glittery past. Apple’s unrefined, persistent vengeance in her gospel harmonies unleash fury on the terrible forgery of modern life and the chaos which ensues from such evil. And going hand in hand with the emotive lyricism comes an enhancing and noisy instrumentation which Apple, along with her small band of three, created using unorthodox items and curious piano playing. Utilising the unfiltered sounds of objects from her Venice Beach home, such as containers wrapped in rubber bands, shaking seeds and ripped paper and even her dog Janet’s bones to create songs which loop, scramble and break the meditative structures of past projects. Whilst at times this can become a slightly repetitive sound, lacking some variation at base level with repetitive chanting and drums – Apple makes sure to balance this with the changing themes and unique lyricism. From the issues of Brett Kavanaugh to social media, to instrumentally with the shiny expectation of full and seamless recording – Apple tackles it all.
As her loudest album yet, Apple is presenting the need to present her music vociferously and offensively; displaying how the world is still “bullshit”, as she once famously said. Yet simultaneously, there are steady moments of understanding and empathy within the rage. In the soft opener ‘I Want You to Love Me’, she pairs “I am the woman who wants you to win, and I've been… waiting for you to love me” with plinking piano, displaying her intricate process of healing. Throughout the album, between her memorable growling and disorderly drums comes a lightness and amusement to her narrative, even while discussing her deep traumas. In ‘Ladies’ she woozily addresses her old partners sleaziness, in a slow, conversational tone, touching on major themes throughout this work of the friendships she wishes she had with the “good” ex-women of her partner and of the wrongs of pitting women against each other. Apple does not thrive on simple vexation, her crudeness comes from a place of honesty, of questioning the norms we too readily accept. Amongst the flirty gleaming falsettos, she spits out harsh call-outs like “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in” – and while this may be clunky to hear for some, it delves into a real and tender experience, verbalising clearly what is often too hard to say.
Despite all the songs maintaining a distinct temperament, Apple is unpredictable, transitioning between Vipassana chanting and flowery language, to themes of arrogant entitlement and even the shaping nature of childhood bullying, in “Shameika.” From roaring peaks to quiet ad-libs, stitched together by raw recordings, Apple switches it up constantly to keep the listener on their toes, rendering each track a bizarre new story. Such can be seen in the ominous “Newspaper,” in which Apple tackles the issue of her abusers’ further assaults, with a fastening-in-pace, layered and heavy drums and creeping backing vocals chasing Apple to the pleading climax of a one-sided conversation with another survivor.
Apple’s constant revisiting of past experiences both in her music and in her craft, as highlighted in this album, calls attention to the importance of personal growth and creative freedom for her development as an artist. This stylistic and percussive-heavy development from her experimental changes in Idler Wheel…. truly set in stone the true depth of her themes, which were often covered up in the flashiness of her early albums. As a seamless personal progression, Fetch the Bolt Cutters is buzzy, witty and timely; yet still maintains the same melodic charm as Apple’s earlier work. And importantly, from Apple herself, the message is obvious; there is incredible power to self-growth and the ability to begin freeing oneself from what is holding them down. Apple’s record is rigid proof that when she trusts her gut, it will serve her well.
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