Album Review: Fiona Apple Wants Better For Herself On 'Fetch The Bolt Cutters'

After eight long years, Fiona Apple has returned. Her fifth album is a dynamic, percussive ode to anger, women’s solidarity, and individuality.  

Written by Carys Anderson 

Photo courtesy of Zelda Hallman

It makes sense that Fiona Apple came out of hiding to release her latest album, and first in eight years, during quarantine. Her label planned an October release, hoping by then their client would be able to tour the world and promote her long-awaited work. But Apple has never followed traditional rules. The artist — who famously declared at her first award show that “this world is bullshit,” who has released just five albums in her 24 year long career, who only leaves her house to walk her dog — fought to release Fetch The Bolt Cutters early, on April 17, to a world now experiencing her constant state of being. Her latest masterpiece is a triumphant testament to survival. It’s fitting for the times, but its messages of empowerment and solidarity, particularly among women, make it an essential hour of music for any occasion. Only a woman so keen to be alone, to chart her own path, could make it. 

Fetch The Bolt Cutters extends the sonic palette of its predecessor, 2012’s The Idler Wheel. The jazz instrumentation of Apple’s earliest work is again traded for an emphasis on percussion. Even the piano, which Apple once used for heartbreaking ballads, is banged out like an instrument of rhythm. But while Apple may have surprised audiences with the starkness of The Idler Wheel, she layers experimental sounds into Fetch The Bolt Cutters. The barking of dogs ends one song and begins another. Rhythms are hammered out on chairs and other household objects. Apple stretches her voice to new places, using it for far more than its famous contralto. She speak-sings, whispers, yells, croaks, squeaks, meows, whistles at the top of her register, murmurs at the bottom. Sometimes words fall out of her mouth, her renowned intellectual poetry unravelling faster than you can assess its brilliance. Other times, she spits out pointed, decidedly terse lines, in instances of common language that are surprising, but affecting.

Many tracks exist in movements, sectioned off with changing drum beats, increasing tempos, and sudden shifts in dynamics. In “Relay,” a clatter of drums soundtracks an observation Apple wrote when she was 15: “Evil is a relay sport, when the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch.” Soon after, she chants a list of grievances ranging from the petty (“I resent you for being raised right, I resent you for being tall”) to the profound (“I resent you for never getting any opposition at all”). 

There’s a sense of humor in her words, but there’s also indignation. “I would beg to disagree, but begging disagrees with me,” she sings in “Under The Table.” Apple’s famous disdain for those in power remains unconcealed. Describing an expensive dinner with important people, she says, “When they say something that makes me start to simmer / that fancy wine won’t put this fire out.” Over droning organ and gospel piano, Apple promises: “Kick me under the table all you want / I won’t shut up.” 

Apple has always been typecast as angry, or sullen, or crazy, or whiny — all the negative traits with which we punish women’s brilliance and bluntness. But in Fetch The Bolt Cutters, the singer unearths decades-old, suppressed anger; the kind that stems from abuse, the kind that women everywhere bottle up. It is a righteous anger. The result is an album about pulling oneself out of a bad situation, and the solidarity women form in doing so. Even the title — a reference to a line spoken by Gillian Anderson in crime drama “The Fall,” in which her character discovers a room used for torture — bolsters this theme of freedom. 

The album charts Apple’s trip into her past, where she dissects her relationships with women and herself — where it all went wrong. Later, she’s in the present, working to fix the problems she discovered. “I took it like a kid, you see / The cool kids voted to get rid of me / I’m ashamed of what it did to me / What I let get done / They stole my fun,” she says in the title track, her voice rising as if she’s coming to these realizations in real time. 

Soon, Apple reaches a moment of clarity. “Fetch the bolt cutters,” she sings. “I’ve been in here too long.” 

While the title track references the bullies who diminished Apple’s self-esteem and stunted her ability to bond with other women — “A girl can roll her eyes at me and kill,” she admits — “Shameika” is a love letter to a classmate who showed the songwriter a moment of kindness. Chaotic, circular piano soundtracks Apple’s lonesome youth, but it halts to honor its titular character, as Apple remembers, “Shameika said I had potential.” “She got through to me and I’ll never see her again,” Apple quavers gratefully. Later, she grows into Shameika’s role and becomes the one calling out to other women. 

“Newspaper,” for example, is Apple’s address to those abused by the same man that she was. 

I too used to want him to be proud of me
And then I just wanted him to make amends
I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me 
To make sure that we’ll never be friends

“And it’s a shame because you and I didn’t get a witness,” Apple says, singing to a woman she can’t meet. Her sister, the cabaret singer Maude Maggart, joins Apple for the next line: “We’re the only ones who know.” 

Image courtesy of Epic Records

The frequent choruses of women across Fetch The Bolt Cutters — including Maggart, Cara Delevingne, who sings on the title track, and Apple’s own multi-tracked vocals — is essential to both the album’s thematic content and to the complex layering that makes the music so rewarding. On “Newspaper,” the sisters’ “oohs” bring an eerie depth to a song otherwise built solely on percussion. 

“Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies,” Apple repeats in the bluesy (you guessed it) “Ladies,” each time with a different inflection. At once sultry, funny, and exasperated, the song is an olive branch to the other woman, the last woman, and the next woman — those often pit against each other when a relationship ends. 

And oh yes, oh yes, oh yes
There's a dress in the closet
Don't get rid of it, you'd look good in it
I didn't fit in it, it was never mine
It belonged to the ex-wife of another ex of mine
She left it behind with a note, one line, it said
"I don't know if I'm coming across, but I'm really trying"
She was very kind

Historically, Apple’s music has focused on the darkest parts of her mind, or condemned the men who burned her romantically. The flipped script here, with a focus on the strength of women united by the wrongdoings of men, highlights the artist’s newfound clarity. It’s an empowering change. 

“For Her,” meanwhile, is a visceral exploration of sexual assault. Apple’s multi-tracked voice and the abruptly changing beat of the drums overwhelm, before they drop off completely into a deliberately harsh spin on a cheery classic: “Well, good morning / Good morning / You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” 

Melodies, songs like these make evident, come secondary to Apple’s message, rhythms, and singular voice. When they do appear, they lay low as light flourishes, like in the bass grooves of “Ladies” or “Heavy Balloon.” Because such discernible, traditional melodies are rare, they grab you immediately. Whimsical notes of mellotron peek out on “Rack Of His,” Apple’s tale of a one-sided relationship. Her voice emphatic as ever, the singer details her devotion to a man who only minimally entertains her love because he “won’t like it when there’s nothing to do.” But, despite this undervaluation, Apple lands on a key of hopeful self-sufficiency. 

And I’ve been used so many times
I’ve learned to use myself in kind
I try to drum, I try to write
I can’t do either well, but 
Oh well, that’s fine, I guess
‘Cause I know how to spend my time

A lot happens at once in these songs, but on Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple is more clear-eyed than ever. Where she was once transparent about her self-destruction, the artist is now uncompromising in her desire for respect. “This world is bullshit” became her famous line, but Apple ended her notorious speech with a different message, one that Fetch The Bolt Cutters distills and encourages: “Go with yourself.”