Critics, Music Fans Go Absolutely Nuts for Fiona Apple’s New Album: ‘An Unyielding Masterpiece’

By Leia IdlibyApr 17th, 2020, 11:23 am
 

Fiona Apple has released her first album since 2012 on Friday and has successfully blown the minds of music fans and critics, who all seem to agree the album is “an unyielding masterpiece.”

The album, which was released amid a nationwide lockdown, is fittingly but coincidently titled Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and revolves around a woman doing some very relatable self-reflection while in isolation. “Fetch the bolt cutters,” she sings. “I’ve been in here too long.”

Vulture called the album “free and uncompromising, the kind of art she has been positioning herself to make all along,” while Riff Magazine claimed Apple “leaves no doubt as to who’s in charge of every musical meandering, from whimsical to accusatory.”

A recent profile in The New Yorker explains that, “These days, the singer-songwriter, who is forty-two, rarely leaves her tranquil house, in Venice Beach, other than to take early-morning walks on the beach with [her dog] Mercy.”

Apple has essentially been practicing social distancing before it was mandated by the state of California — she often tends to be ahead of the cultural curve.

“As a young artist in the late ’90s she wrote piercing songs about, among other things, her experiences with sexual assault and mental illness—topics mainstream pop culture mostly avoided until well into the 21st century,” reads a Time review of her new album. “It figures, doesn’t it, that Apple was voluntarily self-quarantining years before the rest of us were forced to?”

Pitchfork gave Fetch the Bolt Cutters a 10 out of 10 review, which is the first time they have given an album a perfect score in last decade, since Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010.

“Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it,” Pitchfork’s review claimed.

“Self-reliance is its rule, curiosity is its key. Fetch the Boltcutters seems to almost completely turn the volume down on music history, while it cranks up raw, real life—handclaps, chants, and other makeshift percussion, in harmony with space, echoes, whispers, screams, breathing, jokes, so-called mistakes, and dog barks.”

Many fans and critics have also taken to Twitter to share their praise of Apple’s album, several even thanking the songwriter for something good amid the pandemic:

Listen above, via Youtube.

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