Fiona Apple

Fetch The Bolt Cutters EPIC

Raw, homely rattles from the new queen of junk funk.

Already tipped as an album of the year frontrunner, critical chatter isn’t the only buzz circling Fiona Apple’s fifth album. Self-produced from copious found sounds, her mildly feral jazz club vibe has given way to the hum of the home-made; beats are built from tapped kitchen surfaces and implements, bones and seed pods, while melodies are accompanied by cat miaows and barking dogs. It all gives Apple’s streetwise folk funk a reeling, unrestrained feel, rooted in the elemental earthiness of Tom Waits or Kate Bush’s The Dreaming and - combined with Apple’s lip-curled rants, growls and raps - the album ricochets between Patti Smith, Nina Simone and Regina Spector, if the latter had extended her vocal quirks to her instrumentation. It’s enthralling and imaginative stuff, particularly when adopting junkyard African rhythms for Newspaper and Relay, sinking into golden age soul for Ladies or hinting at ragtime Americana on Rack Of His, an operatic Cosmonauts and the deeply horny I Want You To Love Me. Forget the bolt cutters, Apple’s already shed her last shackle. ■■■■■■■■■■