Plucky Apple bubbles with vitality
Fiona Apple Fetch The Bolt Cutters Out now ★★★★★
In a fascinating, fitful career, Fiona Apple has often felt like a one-woman band – singing, playing the piano, perhaps throwing in some rudimentary percussion. Now, with her fifth studio album, she is beginning to resemble a one-woman genre.
There’s less of the piano, which is sometimes reserved for one section of a song, and more of the percussion, which mainly emanates from items Apple finds around her house in California – empty oil cans partfilled with dirt, seed pods freshly baked in the oven, even the bones of her late lamented dog. The album could hardly be more home-made if it came in a jar with a gingham lid.
As a singer, Apple often turns herself into yet another percussive instrument. As a writer, she is moving in the same direction, coming up with choruses that are more like chants.
She is not, in fact, doing it all on her own – at her side are three trusted collaborators, who normally play the bass, guitar and drums (and do so occasionally here). My copy of Fetch The Bolt Cutters didn’t come with the full credits, but it would be no surprise to find that somebody was playing the kitchen sink.
And then there are the words, which are fearlessly frank and often painfully good. One track, Relay, revolves around a line Apple wrote when she was 15: ‘Evil is a relay sport/When the one who’s burned/Turns to pass the torch.’ This wasn’t the work of an overwrought imagination. Three years earlier, Apple had been raped near the family home. Now, 30 years on, she turns that trauma into the kind of song that is sung by army cadets – a traditionally male form of music. For Her opens with Apple taking a deep breath, as well she may. The lyrics take the case of Brett Kavanaugh, the judge who was appointed to the US Supreme Court despite being accused of sex crimes by three women, adds the story of a friend of Apple’s who was an intern in the film industry, and weave them into a patchwork history of the #MeToo era.
It’s almost a relief when Apple switches to singing about depression, on Heavy Balloon. And yet, awful as their subject matter is, these songs still give pleasure. They don’t just seethe with fury, they bubble with vitality.
With her rousing vocals and rumbling piano, Apple sails out into the life-affirming waters of gospel. Alongside all this bitter experience, there’s an air of innocence. It’s a hell of an achievement.
go to the funeral – but it is not until June. That’s how many people are losing their lives at the moment.
It was my other half, Andy, 40, a TV producer, who first noticed there was a real difference between our experiences of the coronavirus. I suppose, in the midst of it all, I just assumed that everyone was going through the same thing. But none of his family, and just one of his friends, has been affected.
Andy is white – and it is now becoming clear that, across Britain and the world, black people, and those with south Asian heritage, are being disproportionately affected by Covid-19. Just as we know men are more at risk when they catch the virus, we have to find out why ethnic minorities are suffering more severe illness.
We need to be armed with the facts, so if we are hit with another peak, we aren’t left scrambling to survive. It has killed surgeons, nurses, pharmacy workers and bus drivers. Young and old.
In my own circles, yes, some have had underlying conditions – but others had none.
Black families typically have such a mix of heritages, from the Caribbean, Africa and across the world. It’s difficult to see any singular reason that could explain why this is happening. But the statistics speak for themselves.
Until research is done, trying to come up with a reason for this is simply guesswork.
And this is not the time for a guessing game.
I’m just at the tail-end of maternity leave – my daughter Florence was born back in August. She, and my son Alfie, who is two, are too little to understand what’s happening. Another small mercy.
But I go to bed frightened about what a new day will bring.
As I write this, there has been no terrible news for a week. Do I dare become hopeful?
I kiss my family every morning, thankful that we’re still healthy. Right now, I just have to take each day as it comes. And I can only hope that, one day, everything will be safe again. That people I love will stop dying. And that we can go back to some semblance of a normal life.
It was my other half, Andy, who is white, who first noticed there was a real difference between our experiences of the coronavirus pandemic