Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel Is Wiser... Review

 

While you may want a new Fiona Apple album more frequently than she delivers it, there is a sense on her fourth studio album that neither you nor her could handle it if she did. The way Apple pours herself completely into each quivering syllable leads you to believe it takes everything she has just to get through each track, leaving you are endlessly thankful for it. The painstakingly strained fits and starts of her vibrato-laced vocals combined with her gloriously unique songwriting make a killer pair on tracks like "Daredevil", as she stalks her way through the pitter-patter of a ticking beat and methodically marching piano, warning, "Don't let me ruin me / I may need a chaperon".

The tumbling stumble of drums introduces the shifty jazz rhythms of "Left Alone", ripe with stormy piano and equally torrential vocals, as she shoots into a delightfully screechy falsetto in the anti-relationship chorus. It is this brand of feverishly mad sonic treasure, along with the way the lyrics effortlessly twirl and spastically sputter out of her on spiteful "Periphery", that makes her such an incredibly unique artist. Apple cannot help but fuss-up even the beautiful piano melody drifting through "Jonathan" with a churning beat and crashing symbols releasing like steam valves behind her weathered vocals, "Just tolerate my little fist / Tugging on your forest chest".

The scary obsessive "Valentine" is perhaps the most vibrant and delightful with the cheery bop of its chorus, "I root for you / I love you / You, you, you, you", but it is her steely-eyed admissions earlier in the tune, "While you were watching someone else / I stared at you and cut myself", that deliver chills. The sparse, eerie moments, like the airy, shuffling beat and slow-motion jewelry box chimes of "Every Single Night" accentuate the wild-eyed nature of Apple's vocals, though the album is just as inescapable in the steady waltz of charming "Werewolf", as she examines an unhealthy relationship, "And I could liken you to a shark / The way you bit off my head / But then again, I was waving around a bleeding open wound". On her staggeringly brilliant fourth album, Apple's immense talent once again proves worth the wait.

Seek - "Every Single Night", "Daredevil", "Valentine"
For fans of - Kate Bush
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