Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Fiona Apple performs in New York City in 2015.
BY MADDY RITTER ’20
Content warning: This article contains mentions of sexual assault.
A pioneer in alternative music since her first album’s release in 1996 at age 18, Fiona Apple released “Fetch The Bolt Cutters” on April 17. Though her last record came out in 2012, she has stayed relevant — last year, she was featured in King Princess’ cover of Apple’s own 1999 track “I Know.”
Apple’s sound has always indulged in chaos, but “Fetch The Bolt Cutters” shies away from any traditional pop structures, surprising the listener at every turn. The critical reception has already been outstanding, earning a rating of 100 out of 100 on Metacritic, the first album to do so in 10 years. The New York Times called it “a bold, cathartic, challenging masterpiece.” On its surface, “Fetch The Bolt Cutters” is about women, relationships and honesty. The album is undoubtedly political, working to explore oppression on a broader scale — like in “Relay” — and dives headfirst into emotions, good and bad.
The title track is a quote by Gillian Anderson, from her role as a sex-crimes investigator in the television series “The Fall.” While the song is about women helping women, Apple also emphasizes the power of women to save themselves. She told Vulture, “The message in the whole record is just: Fetch the f**king bolt cutters and get yourself out of the situation that you’re in — whatever it is that you don’t like.”
The strength of the record lies in Apple’s unbridled womanly rage. Multiple tracks reach their climax in screams, yelps or layers of women’s voices. At the end of the song “Ladies,” Apple repeats the line, “Yet another woman to whom I won’t get through.”
While thematically she expresses disillusionment with women’s isolation from one another, Apple rectifies this musically with the vocal backings of several other women. In “Newspaper,” she speaks to another woman involved with her former lover: “I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me / To make sure that we'll never be friends.” She discusses male dominance and the ways in which men’s treatment of women binds them together, proclaiming, “I watch him walk over you, talk over you, be mean to you / And it makes me feel close to you.”
Apple follows in a tradition of female artists and activists. In “Heavy Balloon,” Apple’s primal shouting, “I spread like strawberries / I climb like peas and beans,” in combination with heavy percussion, builds the earthy and raw quality of the project. One New York Times critic cited the “gorgeous, plinking chorus of ‘I Want You To Love Me,’” the opening track, “that ultimately splinters into wild yelps that, to my ears, conjure Yoko Ono.” I also think of Tori Amos, Nina Simone, Kate Bush and even Mitski and Regina Spektor, among other trailblazing women in music.
One of her most hard-hitting tracks, “For Her,” revisits the subject of female solidarity and male betrayal. Apple and a chorus of women point fingers: “Like you know you should know but you don’t know what you did,” which Apple alone follows with the wake-up call, “Good morning / You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.”
The willingness to explicitly name sexual violence is exemplary of the main theme of the album, which, according to Apple’s own words in The New Yorker, “is not being afraid to speak.” The song “Under The Table” echoes this sentiment as she repeats, “Don’t you, don’t you, don’t you, don’t you shush me / Kick me under the table all you want, I won’t shut up.” Her intended messages come across with unrelenting power and wisdom.
Apple’s return is a triumph, free of apology and filled with determination.