Music Review
Extraordinary Machine
Fiona Apple
With the release of her new recording, Extraordinary Machine, Fiona Apple has now created three CDs that offer us a glimpse into her very fragile emotional world. Her previous albums, the dirty elegance of Tidal (1996) and the percussive upsets of 1999's When the Pawn? challenge the conventional wisdom of the singer-songwriter genre--that words carry the show.
On Machine she doesn't give up on words, opening the sequence with a brilliant bit about not having spent all her time recently shoe shopping. But she doesn't give in to words, either. Music is as much her métier as her compelling, and sometimes, silly lyrics. The album, produced by Mike Elizondo and Brian Kehew, after a struggle with her label and a fan-driven, ?Free Fiona? campaign, is book-ended with two songs left over from her initial recording of these songs with Jon Brion. It concludes with "Waltz.? Apple sings, "If you don't have a point to make/Don't sweat it/You'll make a sharp one being so kind." These are the lines of someone who recognizes that her lyrical content is but one color in her palette of addictive effects; these are the words of someone who knows that moods and atmospheres and essences are nothing to get abstract about, the music can take care of that.
While I like the Brion produced tracks it is the Elizondo-Kehew tracks that really stand out here. Here Apple eclipses herself on these tracks. A less restless person might have settled for simple sonic sculptures; adapting crazy tunings ("O' Sailor") and the deliberately nutty hip-hoppy influenced ("Better Version of Me"), but Apple and her producers design and build exhilarating musical interiors and exteriors in which to house her romantic plights?the sad bedrooms, mystic cathedrals and scary terraces of Fiona Apple's mind.
She reacts to all the circumstances of her life with the strength of her fantastic voice. She is an artist not blinded by anything?love, men, the sanctity of life in any form. Apple, strikes me as someone who doesn?t suffer fools gladly and does not have any time for silly love songs either?she might sing about a lover who doesn?t believe in love and rejoice, because she doesn?t seem to either.
On Machine she doesn't give up on words, opening the sequence with a brilliant bit about not having spent all her time recently shoe shopping. But she doesn't give in to words, either. Music is as much her métier as her compelling, and sometimes, silly lyrics. The album, produced by Mike Elizondo and Brian Kehew, after a struggle with her label and a fan-driven, ?Free Fiona? campaign, is book-ended with two songs left over from her initial recording of these songs with Jon Brion. It concludes with "Waltz.? Apple sings, "If you don't have a point to make/Don't sweat it/You'll make a sharp one being so kind." These are the lines of someone who recognizes that her lyrical content is but one color in her palette of addictive effects; these are the words of someone who knows that moods and atmospheres and essences are nothing to get abstract about, the music can take care of that.
While I like the Brion produced tracks it is the Elizondo-Kehew tracks that really stand out here. Here Apple eclipses herself on these tracks. A less restless person might have settled for simple sonic sculptures; adapting crazy tunings ("O' Sailor") and the deliberately nutty hip-hoppy influenced ("Better Version of Me"), but Apple and her producers design and build exhilarating musical interiors and exteriors in which to house her romantic plights?the sad bedrooms, mystic cathedrals and scary terraces of Fiona Apple's mind.
She reacts to all the circumstances of her life with the strength of her fantastic voice. She is an artist not blinded by anything?love, men, the sanctity of life in any form. Apple, strikes me as someone who doesn?t suffer fools gladly and does not have any time for silly love songs either?she might sing about a lover who doesn?t believe in love and rejoice, because she doesn?t seem to either.