Switched on Pop - Did Fiona Apple Just Release a Perfect Album?

Episode Date: April 28, 2020

Since 1996, Fiona Apple has only ever had one hit, “Criminal.” Nonetheless, every album she’s released has been nominated for a Grammy. Her newest work, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, has received near universal acclaim. Apple’s songs are simultaneously idiosyncratic and relatable, tackling unusual themes for pop songs: middle school bullies, uncomfortable dinner conversation, toxic masculinity and female friendship. Apple accompanies her idiosyncratic lyrics with homemade percussion and only minimal piano. The final product is on the borderline between crafted composition and impromptu improvisation. It is this duality which makes the work relatable and timeless. Her two song suite “I Want You To Love Me” and “Shameika” have connections to Beethoven, Yeats, and Patti Smith, which we break down in the first half. And listeners call in during the second half to share what moved them about the album.  Songs Discussed Fiona Apple - Fast As You Can, Criminal, Under The Table, I Want You To Want Me, Shameika, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Ladies, Heavy Balloon  Beethoven - Moonlight Sonata Patti Smith - Gloria: In Excelsis Deo Van Morrison - Gloria Support explainer journalism — all things pop included — by making a contribution to Vox today: Visit bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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A masterpiece has been released. I'm on the edge of my seat. What are we talking about here, Jalz? and I'm not made for running up that hill And I need to run up that hill I need to run up that hill I will I will I will I will

I'll I've been in here too long Fetch the ball cutters Whatever happens Whatever happens That's the both cover Welcome to Switchedone Pop I'm songwriter Charlie Harding

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan Fiona has released her fifth album, Fetched the Bolt Cutters, and this thing is being declared a masterpiece. Yeah, I haven't seen this much buzz about an album release in, I don't know, Charles. It's been a minute. So for those who might not be familiar, a quick rundown as fast as we can. Fast as you can, baby, run for yourself, a bit fastest.

I see what you did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fiona Apple's known, of course, for her song Criminal. It's the only song of hers that ever peaked on the Billboard. It went up to number 21 in 1997. So in some ways, we could think of her as a one-hit wonder, and yet every album that she's ever released has been nominated for a Grammy. Of course, this album is just out.

We don't know about its future awards, but the critical consensus has been overwhelming. Probably the most bold review has been by Pitchfork, who in all of their history have only given out two perfect 10 reviews and now this is the third. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah. Whoa. Wait, before we talk more, I need to know what the other two reviews are. Okay, so I know that the one prior was Kanye's beautiful, dark twisted fantasy. Ah, okay. And now we have to consult the internets.

Should we each make a guess first? Oh, that's a great idea. Okay, I'm going to guess radio heads kiddie. I'm going to guess neutral milk hotel in the airplane over the sea. And the internet says, wait a minute. Oh, am I wrong about this?

Yeah, you're wrong, but I'm right. Okay, what are we looking at? We're actually, there are actually more than three albums that have gotten a perfect score. I was totally wrong. It has been 10 years since there's been a perfect score, but you're right. There are other albums. And one of them, Charlie? if you look at the year of 1998,

was neutral milk hotels in there and playing over the seas, and what happens if you go to 2000? Oh, Radiohead Kid A, okay. Aren't we cool? Who cares? Okay, Fiona, fetch the bullet cutters. There's been a lot of bold writing about this album

on top of this perfect review. What I enjoyed was Telegraph, who called it a masterpiece for the Me Too era. And I think that that take is apt if you listen to a song like Under the Table. Kick me under the table all you want. I won't shut up. I won't shut up.

Kick me under the table all you want. I won't shut up. I won't shut up. Defiant. Yeah. This album hasn't just connected with people in sort of the larger overarching cultural moments, but actually the very specific.

People in quarantine have really attached to this album. It was recorded in Fiona's vent. Venice Beach home is very DIY. She recorded it into garage band and iPhones. You can hear dogs barking in the background and the natural echoing reverb of her living room. She even actually released this album early. It was supposed to come out in October,

but knowing that it would resonate with people, she wanted to get it out as soon as possible. She says, in her words, it's about breaking out of whatever prison you've allowed yourself to live in, whether you built that prison for yourself or whether it was built around you and you just accepted it.

I think when people are feeling confined in so many ways, I think that this album is connecting with listeners very powerfully. I want to see how the album holds up. I want to listen to the music and see why this is being called a masterpiece. This is an album in many ways about love, about self-love.

She's someone who writes a lot of heartbreak and a lot of love songs. There's really just one true love song on this record, And it's the song that grabbed me first, both because it's the first song on the album, but because it is so lyrically and musically potent. The song is, I want you to love me. This is how you left upon the track has led me here. This is how you start an album. It's like kind of grandiose.

It's a little moody. It's a little, yeah, I don't know. I won't say too much. I want to see where we're going here. Yeah, I love this song. It is a piece about existential questions of impermanence, as well as reflections on love and lost love. Why I love this song is that it's very poetic lyrics match so wonderfully with the music.

It has this swirling piano line that feels like its lyrics. It's a meditation on time. Right. She says, I've waited many years. Next year. This will be clear. This was only leading me to that. This to that, that, that to this.

Years in the past. Years moving forward. Here we are now. We are wrestling with time and acceptance. Yeah. It's an existential big stuff. She's wandering through time and there's despair and there's hope. And we get all of that in the music.

And she does it with this wonderful, magical, musical little trick called an ostinato. Ah, yes. And I thought I would kind of flip the script here. You're the musicologist. Usually you give us a little classical masters, but I wanted a classical master's. you. Whoa. The student has literally become the master.

All right, Charlie. All right. I'm going to just give this a try. Take us there. Heavy lies the head, Charles. I need your help, though. What is an ostinado? Why am I using this ridiculous, large, unnecessary charge of work?

Yeah, an ostinado is a really fancy way of saying any repeated figure in music. In another context, you would call it a riff. Or a vamp. But, you know, if we're putting on our Pinsne and really getting down with classical terminology, let's go with Astonato or the plural, Charlie. Ostenati. Very good.

And if we just had to throw out there, the most famous Osonado that most people would be familiar with, it would be three, two, one, Moonlight Sonata. By Bayton. Yes. Exactly. And what we're hearing here is there's something

continuing in the right hand, but down in the left hand, there's a lot of change. And to highlight what I mean, I'm just going to isolate that right hand, the upper register, where we get these slowly moving, arpeggiating triplets on a minor chord. Just repeats and repeats and repeats. Not particularly interesting on its own. If we check out what's happening in the left hand, where we have a little bit of movement, also extremely boring. And yet, when we put them together,

it's moody, it's powerful, and we're being pulled into it. Totally. I mean, this is the central animating power of the asinado. Your brain is being torn asunder. One part of your brain is listening to this static, repeating phrase,

and the other is listening to this changing melody in the left hand. So you're experiencing, this pleasurable kind of cognitive dissonance where it's almost like even though the notes in the right hand aren't changing they're being like given a set of different Instagram filters or something every time the left hand moves a note so yeah Ludwig we knew what he was doing yeah no for sure and I don't want to just highlight classical pieces to say that classical music is particularly unique in this way as you establish there are wrists vamps all all sorts of other things

but Fiona was a classically trained pianist, so I thought this would be appropriate, especially given that I think that she's doing something similar and something that speaks to the power of her song. If an osanado is this repeating musical phrase, often where other material moves around and against it to set it in new contexts, that feels like it's kind of reflecting

what she's speaking about in her song. Right? It's like, where am I in time? At one point, I'm stuck in time, and other things are moving underneath. Let's see how she does that, and I want you. She builds her Osonado off of a very simple, pretty three-note sequence, moving upwards and thirds.

If we listen to the most basic version, it's just this. Then she takes that, she raises it up, and then we go even further up and back down nicely. When we put it all together, it's very pretty it is and it has this almost unguarded

kind of simplicity it almost sounds like an exercise that a child would play thank you Nate I was able to figure out how to play it on piano because of its simplicity but then when you add the other half the left hand with these kind of ominous moving

bass notes it complicates the whole picture and adds these kind of dark stormy clouds yeah let's listen to each one of them because I hear that constant and that change each time takes on a very different emotional quality. Here's the first set of harmonies that we hear against the ostinado deep down in the bass. Root note, pretty positive sounding. Yeah, I feel like this is a little dreamy, maybe like a little uncertain because it has that wonderful lift.

This is major. It feels like things could go somewhere, and they do. They go down to the minor. A little more. a little unsettling. And yet there is a lift at the very end. That's promising but uncertain.

Yeah, right? Could be going a lot of different places. I feel like we have that cheeriness, that uplift, there is that fall and then there is that uncertainty. It's all in there. We're wrestling in the lyric and in the music with

where are we going? Is it this way or that? Where are we going in time? And yet, The song, almost like in a Broadway tradition, is a want song. In the chorus, we finally find out what is going to ground us against this wild, uplifting, uncertain, waffling asinado. I haven't heard an o'u like that in many moons. What do you hear?

We have another kind of asinado, but this time it's just a single note being held over these constantly, shifting sonorities and that note is you it is you so we're centering the song now around a single figure something to ground yourself and all this

temporal dissociation yeah she is centering the song on the word you this is what she wants she wants you we don't know exactly who you is but it could be a stand-in for anybody she is singing one note straight all the way through

that chorus as all of these really crunchy and challenging chords underneath change. Yeah. It's not exactly pretty, right? We're hearing her voice and kind of all of its rawness. It flutters. There's moments where it's strong. There's moments where it's weak.

Yeah. The intonation gets a little pitchy. It almost sounds like she's faltering. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was wondering why make this choice. And I found this interview with Rachel Handler at Vulture. Fiona says that I think I've stopped trying to be a singer, actually.

I have fun with my voice, but I'm not trying to make it pretty all the time. I'm not trying to convince anybody I'm a singer. It just turned out to be another instrument. Fiona Apple is an exceptional singer, the unbelievable vocal control. Anyone who's listened to any of her records could attest to that. But I think that the way that she's using her voice here, all of those fluctuations, that uncertainty, that breathiness,

all of that is intentional. I think that she's trying to show that I want you, to accept me for all of the imperfections that I might have. And for me, what's happening underneath that emphasizes her desire to be heard exactly as she is, not as a performance of who she is, because the chords are so discordant. They are challenging. Let's take a listen. Let's zoom in on them.

Hmm. You hear those two chords? We're going back and forth. Major, minor, major, minor, and like some nasty dissonances. I mean, check this out. Major. Biner. Major, minor, major, minor, major minor, major minor, major minor.

Like, she's modulating. She's going to all these different places. And over it, she's just singing, I want you. It doesn't matter what's happening in time. It doesn't matter all of the things that are changing, what is constant. is that desire for connection. Now, in the usual course of our show, we'll often stick to a single song

to elucidate someone's work. But we couldn't do that here because I Want You to Love Me isn't really one song. In fact, it just smoothly elides into the second track on the album. That chord progression, that waffling, major, minor,

becomes the main riff, or ostinato. We have many Ossanati, don't we, Nate. It becomes the main riff of the next song, Shamika. Yeah, it's lost its kind of atmospheric quality and become this driving groove. I think that's fitting because from here the album takes a shift from the sort of impersonal and universal to the very biographical and idiosyncratic. I've never I've never heard I wasn't a fear of the bullies

And that just made the bullies worse I've never heard a song quite like this before It's pretty unique Fiona Apple examining her middle school anxieties About the It Girls and the bullies And trying to find her place Putting on airs trying to be complicated and in real life there was this young woman who spoke with a young apple and said,

you have potential. Like, stop trying to please everybody else. Like, you get to be your own person, basically. And it stuck with her entire life, and she turned it into this song. Wow. And yet, while there is this shift to the extremely specific, it feels like it's just coming off the tip of her tongue. Jamika said I had potential. It's like such a funny, it's a goofy, right?

Yeah. Still, this is a Fiona Apple song. She is someone who has great lyrical dexterity and a lot of poetry and deep references. This is the kind of album you can just like burrow deeper and deeper into and find all these wonderful little nuggets of creativity. One of my favorite references is this little refrain that she keeps turning to in the song.

That's my bird and my tree. My dog and my man and my music is my holy trinity. What? Yeah, that was a crazy portmanteau of hurricane and Christian liturgy. Not sure how to parse it, but I'm into it. Right. It felt at first to me almost like a Beck lyric where you're like, is this just intentional nonsense because it sounds cool? Like, it sounds great.

It has wonderful cadence to it. It was also something where we're like, this is so bizarre that I have to go down the rabbit hole and figure out what's going on here. So we actually have a mashup of a handful of references. I'm sure there's more than I'm getting. The first thing you got was Hurricane Gloria, which was a hurricane in the 90s, but Hurricane Gloria and Excelsius Deo.

Okay, that's, as you said, Christian liturgy. Gloria and Exelsus Deo, what do we know that from? Because there's a hymn. It ends up being a reference to a Patty Smith song. So it's kind of like her saying, like, that was what I worshipped when I was a kid. Check this up. This is Patty Smith's,

Gloria. That may be familiar because she's actually taking from a Van Morrison song, Gloria, which is kind of about like male pleasure and inverts it into a song about two women finding each other at a concert and falling deeply in love. Wow. I did not think that rabbit hole would pop out in a Van Morrison and them track. Yeah, we're not out of the rabbit hole because she's, She's pairing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, no, no. So, like, this is sort of like, okay, we're in the middle school day. So she's like, here's what I loved in middle school. This is me shouting out my love for Patty Smith. But she says, Hurricane Gloria in Excelsis Deo, that's my bird and my tree. I was like, that's a funny little turn of phrase. Like, what is that? It turns out that this is a line from a Yates poem.

Do you remember perhaps reading a middle school sailing to Byzantium? Oh, yeah. It's this wonderful poem about reflecting. on time and aging and trying to find the desire for eternal life and connecting back to youth. You know what, Nate, you're such a good dramatic reader. Can I just text you a line that you'll read for us? Yeah, I'm happy to, but I do have a few stipulations in my writer. I'd like to get like a crack of thunder and then let's go into like a bed of low strings.

Okay, now I'm ready. That is no country for old men. Young in one another's arms, birds in the trees. Oh, it just rings beautifully. And there we have our bird in our tree. Whoa. This is cool. I'm all over this, yeah.

Yeah, the bird in the tree metaphor serves as this yearning for eternal youth, which makes sense because Fiona Apple is reflecting on her middle school years here. The whole point being here is that with, Fiona Apple, you're getting just all of these multi-textual references and connections to the things that are important to her. And even between two songs, the themes continue, right? If in the first song, we're dealing with existential issues on time, she's referencing a Yates poem in the second song, which is also dealing with those same themes, even though she's at the same time singing about,

this very kind of off-the-cuff DIY song about I'm just reflecting on middle school like it almost sounds like it could have been improvised in the studio in fact much of this album was improvised and this album connects with people

in so many different ways it'd be impossible to cover the entire work as a whole I thought perhaps what would be more valuable would be to pass the mic to some of our listeners who have left us voice

notes about how this album has personally connected with them. Both the song, I Want You to Love Me, as well as many other of the great works, many that become quite percussive and challenging and really rhymy and great. So let's listen to those when we come right back. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of You know the form of Pago with a form of the

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Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE.

When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. Even though Fiona Apple hasn't had a charting song since the 1990s, her music deeply resonates with people. And when I saw what happened on social media when her album came out, I knew that we had to hear from some other voices.

So much like the critics, listeners have had a lot to share. So let's check out a couple of their perspectives. Hi, Switched on Pop. My name is Kristen. To say this album has moved me would be an understatement. The lyrics are masterful, but the line I felt the most is, I know none of this will matter in the long run, but I know a sound is still a sound around no one. It makes me think of all the times I was angry or sad, and how those feelings are still valid,

even though no one else understands. But don't worry, because how bad I feel now won't last forever. Anyway, I could go on and on about Fiona's music, but I'll leave off here. Thanks, guys. Hi, I'm Emily Vanderwerf. I reviewed Fetch the Bolt Cutters for Vox.com, where I'm the critic at large, my favorite part of the album, a part that makes me tear up every time I hear it is the opening song, I want you to love me. Second verse, section, especially that goes, and I know none of this will matter in the long run, but I know a sound is still a sound around no one. And while I'm in this body, I want somebody to want.

Someone who thinks about her own body a lot and has a new relationship to it recently. This song has meant a lot to me. Hi, my name is Beam, like a Beam of Light. My favorite moment from this album is from I Want You to Love Me. It takes place kind of near the end of the song, the part where she sings, and I want you to use it, blast the music, bang it, bite it, bruise it.

She switches it up, almost like yelling to the beat, and it just changed the whole dynamic of the song and just delivers the message of the song about wanting to be love and how elemental that love is a part of your life. life. Yeah, that's my absolute favorite and then it keeps me coming back to the song over and over again. Hey there, I'm Lauren Michelle Jackson and I've just got to say something about the Fetch the Bolt Cutters recitation on the track that bears the album's name. Obsessed as I always am with the voice, I'm really drawn to this like soft percussive pat of the tongue that she

emphasizes on the latter person of the word cutters. It's like it's not ready at all. There's a real teeth feel to it. I don't know if teeth feel, is that even a thing? I don't know, but I really love it. And just the recitation and the repetition of that part is just so, I don't know, gives me a shiver. There is so much to love about fetch the bolt cutters, but one of my favorite things is the total mastery that Fiona has over her cadence.

And the way that she conveys these really complicated emotions through subtle changes in her vocal inflection. I love the exaggerated way that she sings the third verse of ladies, especially the lines, don't get rid of it, you look good in it, I didn't fit in it, it was never mine. Oh yes, oh yes, in the clouds. I didn't fit in it. It was never mine that belonged. I think her articulation is just packed with mood and backstory, and she uses brilliant affectations like this all over the album. Hi, my name is Peter in that lovely little passage from the song Ladies. She describes that dress in the closet and how it was left for her by the ex-wife of another ex of hers. I didn't fit in it. It was never mine. It belonged to the ex-wife of another ex-of-mine.

She left it behind with a no one line. It said, I don't know if I'm coming across, but I'm really trying. She was very kind. For me, as a gay person, it was really refreshing to have, in any song, like ever by anyone, something that acknowledges sort of the weird, complicated relationships that you have with the people tangential to whoever you're currently in a relationship with. And especially when, you know, maybe you're a little bit more in an open relationship or things are a little bit more fluid, or you're just aggressively single and seeing a lot of different people at once. So, you know, just nice to see something different out there in the world.

There is so much more on this album. There's so many perspectives. There's so many ways of listening. It's intimate. It's personal. It's often challenging. Especially when Fiona Apple drops the piano and it just becomes these really percussive, difficult songs.

I think that's intentional, in fact. You know, this is something that wants us to work hard to discover our innermost emotions. I believe the critics got it right. At the top of the episode, we spoke about Pitchfork's 10 out of 10 review. And to some things up, I asked the author to share with us my favorite excerpt. Hi, this is Jen Pelly. I wrote the review for Pitchfork of Fiona Apple's new album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. On Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona unapologetically indites the world around her,

and she rejects its oppressive logic in every note. The very sound of Fetch the Bolt Cutters dismantles patriarchal ideas. Professionalism, smoothness, competition, perfection, aesthetic standards that are tools of capitalism used to warp our senses of self. I love that writing, and I love this album. I think maybe when we look inward as a way of fighting, external pressures can reflect back not our most polished self, but our best self. And I think that that's what Fiona Apple is trying to give us here.

I'm so thankful to be able to share my listening, my hearing with you, Nate, but also to get to hear how so many other people have taken beautiful things from it, how it's a touch their lives. Yeah, I'm, I'm forklumped, man. I'm feeling all the feels. Let's, let's end this before it gets messy. I want to thank Emily, Kristen, Beam, Warren, Anna, Peter for their contributions on this episode. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nishak Kerouwa, Liz Nelson, Nate Sloan, and me, Charlie Harding.

We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Our editor and engineer is Brandon McFarland. Our illustrator is Iris Gottlie, social media by Abby Barr. You can find more episodes anywhere you get podcasts, and we'll be back. in another week with a hot new episode. This time, it really is going to be about some cool music happening on television. I don't know. You keep promising every week. I'll believe it when I hear it. We'll see. We'll see. All right, until then, thanks for listening.