Fiona Apple performed three songs off of her newest release.
“This world is bulls**t; go with yourself,” Fiona Apple famously said during her 1997 Video Music Awards acceptance speech. In just a few dense sentences she established herself as willfully honest. The world from that moment on thought of her as a diva, insulted by receiving the award. She dissolved the pragmatic cleanness that the average popstar held. A year after her critically acclaimed debut Tidal, the American singer-songwriter and pianist, Fiona Apple shattered the fantasy of the pop machine. She implored everyone to do what they individually find cool, not what one would think that a celebrity would find cool. Pompous in 1997, revelatory in 2020. Fetch the Bolt Cutters arrived nearly a month into the strange in-between world that we call quarantine. Through cyberspace I experienced this album; in my bedroom, in my car, on walks, with my one friend down the block. My Spotify social tab for the entire month following the release was full of friends listening to Fetch the Bolt Cutters. This album was made in a reclusive swirl of creativity, all of the sounds and lyrics coming from the confines of her California home. Her five dogs are credited on the album for their barks at the end of the title track. This domestic atmosphere, however, is a limitless well of emotion and lyricism. The poignance Fiona Apple brings to the musical world is unprecedented; she writes with an acute vulnerability where her unadulterated thoughts and poetry coincide. There is no holding back from what should be said on any Fiona Apple album. For a woman who is known for her open and loud mouth, she sings with conviction and precision.
Apple performed three tracks on Fetch the Bolt Cutters live for the first time for the New Yorker Festival which was broadcasted online. She opens with Shameika. She begins by nodding her head, a knowing smile on her face, ready to enter the portal of her art. The song kicks off with a heavy drum beat then immediately rushes into the avalanche of melody played by Fiona on the piano. The notes rock back and forth on a scale that is tonally jazzy and dark. Each movement has purpose, as she dances her hands across the piano. Her voice joins in, enunciating each lyric as each line feeds into the poetry. She shouts “Hurricane Gloria in excelsis deo / that’s my bird in my tree / my dog and my man and my music is my holy trinity,” all whilst pounding rhythm and melody out of the piano. Her visage is strong; eyes shut, jawline taught, voice sharp. In several interviews she has described Shameika as a list of the things she likes about herself, finally. Compared to Fast as You Can, a single from her sophomore album, instead of calling herself crazy, she’s “pissed off, funny, and warm,” and “a good man in a storm.” There is sureness of self in a world where she has cultivated strength instead of weakness. There is less questioning; she takes an event that occurred in sixth grade in which a girl who was not her friend, Shameika, said that Fiona had potential. She sings the hook with unrelenting passion, and when her piano part fades out, she puts her hands to her hips and says it again. The message got through to her, and even though it’s over twenty years later, Fiona Apple knows she has potential. She faces her piano the entire performance, her band jamming behind her. She’s in her own dreamworld of art, closed eyes with intuitive hands nailing every note. The songs are so threaded within her, it feels as if she is performing alone at home similar to how she recorded the album.
Shameika fades out in a funky, bassy trudge and we cut to a black screen. “FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS” flashes on the screen, and Fiona is now sitting at a small drum set. She plays the opening beat of the title track, a stern look on her face. One can see when she is passionate about a particular line, slamming the drum harder, wincing in artistic truth. The talk-sing cadence of this song combined with the intimate close-ups of Fiona at the drum set feel like a conversation one could have with her. Remarking on a friendship with candid lyrics of what tumult happened, she launches into the titular chorus: “Fetch the bolt cutters, I’ve been in here too long / Fetch the bolt cutters /whatever happens, whatever happens.” It’s a freeing motif; knowing when to let go, and finally doing it. She jovially talks about how judgments and comparisons affected her in the past, now embedded and understood. The comparisons were shallow and those judging her truly never knew her. She even references Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill,” as the freedom from the searing douleur of judgment: “I grew up in the shoes they told me I could fill / shoes that were not made for running up that hill / but I need to run up that hill / I will, I will, i will…” She shouts the last line, knowing her goals now and the distorted mess of the past.The shuffling rhythm of the drums melds gently with her voice, the xylophone shining in the background. She continues to shout “Whatever happens / I will” with wild power. She is a woman who knows where to go, her decisions informed by the splendid chaos that is living.
The last track we are presented with is the opening track of the album “I Want You to Love Me.” Fiona plays the opening melody on the piano, a glistening, wistful line. The piano receives the camera’s close attention, each key and peg firing off into musical bliss. Fiona leans into the mic, prophesying her life, wishing for love. The second verse is the most potent lyrically; it’s almost naturalistic. She describes time as elastic, and that when she goes “all my particles disband and disperse and I’ll be back in the pulse.” She flows through life in a verse, at the end yearning for love. She knows that during the short span we all have, it’s critical to create the indelible connections that make the incessant questioning of existence worthwhile. We see her band sway in the background, taking in the heavy poetry of the song, dominated by her sweet, meandering piano. She holds out the “You” for several bars, breath-draining to most singers, capturing the longing for somebody in the line “I want you / to love me.” She adds vibrato not present on the album making for an even more visceral experience. The next verse is a drum-filled passage where Fiona amplifies her voice, belting her love and strength to this person. She peels back into the last chorus that waltzes into a falsetto and then into absurdity. She reaches the top, making hysterical high pitched sounds as the drums crescendo, one hand furiously tapping out a chord. Then it ends with a single “ah.” The performance is a whirlwind of yearning, power, sureness, and musical ingenuity. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is an album of honest precision by one of the most outspoken women in music. The lyrics are complex yet resonate immediately. This performance may not have been live but the emotion conveyed to the viewers is ethereal.