Review: Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…

BY JACK BRADY

After years of what some might call self-imposed exile, cult singer/songwriter Fiona Apple has returned with new album The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do; which is truly the re-emergence of Fiona Apple dedicated fans have waited years for. With an unmatchable visceral, gripping force, The Idler Wheel envelops the listener through the mesmerizing world of Apple’s emotions, where crippling anguish fades to enlightened clarity, and draws to a close in sonic rapture. Deconstructing both her sound and her self, Apple tears herself down to the very core of her being, and rebuilds herself piece-by-piece into something better than ever before.

Apple’s mesmerizing contralto voice and genuinely poetic lyrics astounded audiences and critics alike on her debut album Tidal. Confidently bridging the gap between the hell-if-I-care attitude of pop music and pensive brooding that might isolate mainstream music fans, Tidal was both universally accessible and impressively refined. In the first lines of album opener “Sleep To Dream,” Apple displayed both the precocious power of her voice and the eloquence of her lyrics, delivered with a sense of hard-earned triumph and impassioned insight that defines her work. Whether she’s railing against the betrayals of past lovers or grappling with the demons of her past, Apple didn’t merely licked her wounds, she bore her scars earnestly; acknowledging the pain they caused but refusing to let her past dominate her future. Rather than bask in Tidal’s success, Apple famously displayed her effortless charisma, deriding the frivolous world of MTV at her own artist of the year acceptance speech.  In the following years, Apple would release her second album, When the Pawn… whose full title is in fact a 90-word poem and the longest in the world.  Apple gradually retreated from the spotlight, entering a hiatus of sorts until the stormy release of 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, when personal artistic strife was coupled with record company’s delays; still, these struggles would birth one of Apple’s best works.

Apple attained a mythical status in the pantheon of contemporary musicians as she again withdrew from her celebrity status following Extraordinary Machine’s release and subsequent tour.  Apple has spent the last seven years on a second hiatus of sorts, a fugue state punctuated by an occasional tour with personal friends, progressive folk band Nickel Creek, and sporadic performances at the L. A. club Largo.  The Idler Wheel was recorded in secret during the long years of her break, Apple herself isn’t sure when recording officially began.  Extraordinary Machine’s polished instrumentation rusted away and has been forged into something new in the caustic flames of Apple’s fervent vision.  The Idler Wheel is her first album without the influence of producer Jon Brion (Who has since gone on to work with artists from Kanye West to Best Coast) and as such The Idler Wheel is closer to Fiona in sound as well as spirit than any before.

Author Jonathan Ames, and old flame of Fiona’s, haunts much of the album, and his lingering specter is the target audience of much of the album’s most dissonant, vitriolic tracks. The ubiquitous “Jonathan” sets Apple’s ruminant, brooding, piano work and vocals laced with weary resignation over muted machinations of industrial machinery, leading right up to center track “Left Alone,” which showcases the talent of Idler Wheel’s co-producer and Apple’s touring drummer Charley Drayton.  Drayton’s syncopated, wild rhythms solidify the song as the album’s most energetic, as Apple decries her struggle to reconcile her fierce individuality with her need for intimacy, lamenting“How can I ask anyone / To love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?” “Regret”, however, is by far the most powerful and arresting track on the album, Apple’s voice quaking with raw, cathartic power a final exorcism of her inner demons.

Yet after each of the album’s vitriolic rebuttals, an equally poignant track of lucid, lyrical self-reflection follows. “Werewolf” sits in stark contrast to the feverish pace of its predecessor “Left Alone”, Apple’s perceptive admittance of her own fault displayed in opening lyrics, “I could liken you to a werewolf, the way you left me for dead/But I admit/That I provided a full moon”, or the snarky, buoyant, anti-suburban expose of “Periphery.”

Yet album closer “Hot Knife” is by far the album’s most constructive, as Apple and sister Maude Maggart, a talented artist in her own right, perform together in mesmerizing harmony, weaving their voices together into an aural tapestry that bandages all of Apple’s wounds. For the first time in over a decade, Fiona Apple is truly whole.