Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the fifth studio album by American singer Fiona Apple. It was released on April 17, 2020, and is Apple's first release in nearly eight years, since The Idler Wheel... in 2012. The album received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. Background and recording In 2012, Apple began conceptualising a new album, considering a concept album based on her home in Venice Beach or the Pando in Utah. In 2015, she began recording the album with bassist Sebastian Steinberg, drummer Amy Aileen Wood and guitarist Davíd Garza. They began recording in Apple's Venice Beach home studio, using home-made percussive objects and chanting as they marched around the house. They spent three weeks at the Sonic Ranch studio in rural Texas, with little success. Upon returning to Venice Beach, they began making progress, with Apple recording long takes consisting of instruments being hit against surfaces and objects. Apple's vocals were unedited, and the album developed a highly percussive sound. By July 2019, Apple had begun mixing the album. In September, the process began to slow down, with Apple developing doubts about the album. At this time, the artist first mentioned work on her new project in an interview with Vulture, explaining that she was still working hard on her next album which should have been released "a million years ago" and was hoping to put it out in 2020. She also admitted to being reclusive due to ongoing recording sessions at her Venice Beach house. In January 2020, she played the mixes to her band members, whose positive response brought Apple back on track. In an interview that month, she said that the album process was in its final stages, with the only things left being "artwork and stuff". On March 9, 2020, she revealed that she had finished recording, making the announcement in sign language. Music and lyrics The album's sound is percussive and raw. Songs feature looped sections, and sudden tempo changes. Apple's long-time bassist Sebastian Steinberg compared the album to Apple's 2012 song "Hot Knife", describing it as "very raw and unslick". Lyrically, Apple identified its main theme as "not being afraid to speak". She also explores her complex social relationships with other women.
You don’t need to know that Fiona Apple recorded her fifth album herself in her Los Angeles home in order to recognise its handmade clatter, right down to the dogs barking in the background at the end of the title track. Nor do you need to have spent weeks cooped up in your own home in the middle of a global pandemic in order to more acutely appreciate its distinct banging-on-the-walls energy. But it certainly doesn’t hurt. Made over the course of eight years, <i>Fetch the Bolt Cutters</i> could not possibly have anticipated the disjointed, anxious, agoraphobic moment in history in which it was released, but it provides an apt and welcome soundtrack nonetheless.<br /> Still present, particularly on opener “I Want You to Love Me”, are Apple’s piano playing and stark (and, in at least one instance, literal) diary-entry lyrics. But where previous albums had lush flourishes, the frenetic, woozy rhythm section is the dominant force and mood-setter here, courtesy of drummer Amy Wood and former Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg. The sparse “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is backed by drumsticks seemingly smacking whatever surface might be in sight. “Relay” (featuring a refrain, “Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch,” that Apple claims was excavated from an old journal from written she was 15) is driven almost entirely by drums that are at turns childlike and martial. None of this percussive racket blunts or distracts from Apple’s wit and rage. There are instantly indelible lines (“Kick me under the table all you want/I won’t shut up” and the show-stopping “Good morning, good morning/You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”), all in the service of channelling an entire society’s worth of frustration and fluster into a unique, urgent work of art that refuses to sacrifice playfulness for preaching.
