The new Fiona Apple album is finally here and, predictably, it's reeeeeeeeeally good. It feels more raw and direct than The Idler Wheel, kinda fitting for these times. I've listened to it a couple times so far and I can already tell it's gonna be in constant rotation around here. Click the album cover to check it out.
Really nice piece in the New Yorker today on Fiona Apple and her upcoming album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. She's been a fave for a long while and her albums are too far between. Her last one, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, was released in 2012. The time between that one and the previous, Extraordinary Machine, was 9 years. So, yeah, there's a little pattern. In any case, please enjoy this article while you're social distancing and waiting for Fetch the Bolt Cutters to drop: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/fiona-apples-art-of-radical-sensitivity
In an update of the Simon & Garfunkel classic, Phoebe Bridgers and Fiona Apple sound great together singing Silent Night, while Matt Berninger reads the news. Now can we have a full album with the three of them, please?
I'm gonna start with Vanessa, because this song was the one that gave me this idea.
I first came across Vanessa around 2002, I think, when I used to post on the Aimee Mann message board. We bonded over a Fiona Apple song called Never Is A Promise, specifically the "live on KCRW" version of the track (which I absolutely adore). You can find it on Volume 3 of KCRW's Rare on Air series, if you want to look for it.
Things around the message board got kinda weird, so I deleted all of my posts and decided to just live on the now-defunct Bowlie forum. I didn't feel particularly attached to the Aimee Mann community, and I spent way more time at Bowlie, anyways. Vanessa was the only person (on the Aimee board) I really liked, so I told her I was gonna bail, sent a Bowlie link to her and asked her to come along. To my surprise, she did and everything turned out pretty cool. We got to hang out more than a few times and we became pretty good friends. I'm fairly sure the pic above is from a Bowlie meet in New York in 2003. If it wasn't for this Fiona Apple track, we might not have chatted much at all.
Fiona Apple with her version of Elvis Costello's "I Want You". This is from the Decades Rock Live! show, which pairs up "classic" and contemporary artists. Fiona completely owns this song, she burns and smolders, singing it like some fucking psycho stalker ex girlfriend. Reminds me of some girls I used to know. In any case, I think it's an excellent rendition. You can also check out a video here, if you're so inclined. Listen: Fiona Apple > I Want You
