Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple, 2020, :52
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Well-known or being one of the very few perfect score albums on Pitchfork. I'm a big fan of When the Pawn, so I was looking forward to this. It does not disappoint. I don't know if it's deliberate, but Apple overcomes her somewhat limited range (most of her songs rattle along at a bump-pa-PUM, bump-pa-PUM pace) in that everything comes out sounding like percussion: the piano, handclaps, bass. Tribal songs and schoolyard chant rhythms influence her vocal delivery, which is also percussive. It all feels and sounds like Apple is lambasting you around the head with words and snark and anger and internal rhyme and more words. It's quite brilliant. The album contains multitudes. Just dig this one verse: "While I'd not yet found my bearings / Those It Girls hit the ground / Comparing the way I was to the way she was / Sayin' I'm not stylish enough and I cry too much / And I listened because I hadn't found my own voice yet / So all I could hear was the noise / That people make when they don't know shit / But I didn't know that yet." This is real talk for the girls and other kids who need to hear it. Hell, I'm an old man, and I'm still learning. Favorite tracks: "I Want You To Love Me," "Ladies," "Relay," "Cosmonauts," "For Her."
