FIONA APPLE

GROWING PAINS

Fiona Apple delves deeper into the dark heart of dysfunctional romance

By: MATT ASHARE |
Published: June 19, 2012 http://www2.the-burg.com/entertainment/201

Fiona Apple's right: There's nothing inherently wrong when a song ends in a minor key. That's one of the central metaphors in "Werewolf," one of ten emotionally wrought, musically spare tracks on her new The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do, only her fourth studio album since debuting, in 1996, with the multi-platinum Grammy-winner Tidal, and her second with a title that exceeds a dozen-and-a-half words.

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (Epic)

       That romance can be treacherous terrain — that, as Neil Sedaka once put it, "Breaking Up Is Hard To Do" — has been a central motif for Apple throughout her career as a singer/songwriter/pianist, a run that has been marked by nearly as many long silences as expansive album titles. It's as if, in order to summon the muse, Apple must first subject herself to nearly toxic levels of personal trauma, romantic turmoil, and self-flagellation. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that if one bad date's an anecdote, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern, then Apple appears to have turned questionable mating habits into something of an obsession.

       "Every single night's a fight/And every single fight's alright," she sings through jaws clenched tight on the opening track of The Idler Wheel, against a brittle celeste melody reminiscent of toy piano. And she starts the next cut, "Daredevil," by quietly admitting, "I don't feel anything until I've smashed it up," before working up to the raw-throated, feverish demand, "Gimme, gimme, gimme what you got in your mind, in the middle of the night." Sure, it's candid, as Apple is wont to be. But it's not exactly a recipe for a successful love life.

       "Left Alone" and "Regret" are two of the more telling track titles on The Idler Wheel, as is "Jonathan," which just happens to be the first name of one of her more recently departed semi-famous flames, the writer/comic provocateur Jonathan Ames. (Before that, it was deadpan street magician David Blaine.) Reading autobiography into songs is, more often than not, a dangerous game. But, when Apple croons plaintively, "Jonathan, call again/Take me to Coney Island/Take me on the train/Kiss me while I calculate/And calibrate/And heaven's sake/Don't make me explain," it's hard to imagine she's doesn't have Ames in mind, especially when she concludes with the open ended, "You're like the captain of a sinking ship/But I like watching you live."

       There's more. "How can I ask anyone to love me, when all I do is beg to be left alone," she implores on the chorus of "Left Alone," stretching the last syllable of that final word out until it's barely recognizable. And there's a tinctured touch of targeted venom in Apple's whisper-to-a-stinging-scream delivery of the daggered verse, "Now when you look at me/You're condemned to see/The monster your mother made you to be/And there you got me/That's how you got free/You got rid of me," in the fittingly rueful "Regret."

       So, yeah, the songs do remain pretty much the same in terms of subject matter for Apple on The Idler Wheel. (For better or worse, the rhyme, “I’m a tulip in a cup/I stand no chance of growing up,” from “Valentine,” is a good example of honest self-criticism.) But the settings for the wounded soul-baring on the new disc represent a rather radical – and wise – departure from Apple’s previous albums, which she recorded with the help of pop-savvy producer Jon Brion and a full complement of seasoned studio pros. This time, she teamed up with multi-instrumentalist Charley Drayton, a jazz-trained percussionist who, among other credits, made the cut for Keith Richards’ solo band the X-Pensive Winos. Working in tandem, they’ve stripped each song here down to its skeletal essence, mirroring, in a sense, the unfiltered flow of naked emotion Apple pours into each track.

PERSONAL NOTES: There's a tinctured touch of targeted venom in Apple's whisper-to-a-stinging-scream delivery.

       Apple’s still a Tori Amos acolyte at heart, a dark, smoldering piano-playing chanteuse given to deeply personal poetic flights of fancy. But it feels like she’s growing into an artist who’s more uniquely herself. It also sounds like she’s taken some pointers from the quirkier symmetries of anti-folk songstress Regina Spektor, given the odd angles with which she approaches piano chordings, the jazzy trills and sly slurs she incorporates into her vocal delivery, and the avant touches she includes like the recording of what appears to be a factory machine that creates the rhythmic foundation for “Jonathan.”

       Drayton’s contributions are largely an exercise in modest restraint, as Apple exorcizes her demons with demonstrative stabs at her keyboard, flowing arpeggios, and, of course, plenty of minor chords. He adds a soft pitter-pat beat and some vamping guitar to “Daredevil,” drops a couple of frenzied drum solos into neurotic rush of “Left Alone,” and lays some complicated polyrhythms under the oscillating chords of the reservedly optimistic “Anything We Want.” But just as often, he steps out of the picture and lets Apple go off on her own strangely compelling tangents, coloring around the edges with ambient shadings.

       If, at times, that makes for a challenging listen, it also marks The Idler Wheel as Apple’s most complete artistic statement to date. She’s certainly stepped out on the ledge emotionally in the past; here she matches that by taking some chances musically, particularly with her voice. Indeed, the album ends with nothing but a multi-tracked Apple singing three intersecting verses a cappella fashion in “Hot Knife.” I believe it may also be the only track on the disc that doesn’t end in a minor key.