"But Then The Dove of Hope Began Its Downward Slope"
The stage was lit green. Fiona Apple came out, paused at the baby grand piano, took a swig from her water bottle, and waved to us. Her wave was strangely, endearingly child-like. It was quick and successive and torqued from her elbow rather than from her wrist. She was wearing a long zebra striped dress, slit up to her thighs on the right and clinched at the waist by a thin pink belt. Fiona looked about 90 lbs, gaunt, eyes large and sunken into her skull. Under the green stage lights, she looked sickly pastel. I, and probably 75% of the audience, felt an overwhelming urge to rush up to her and wrap a blanket around her frail shoulders and feed her chicken soup and multivitamins. But then the drums kicked in and Blake Mills's guitar spat out the opening distorted chords for Fast As You Can and thus began a riveting, unforgettable 90 minute set on a Wednesday night at Terminal 5.
Fiona Apple rocketed to pop stardom in 1996 with her hit single Criminal -- more specifically, the music video of Criminal, which featured a barely legal Fiona in her panties writhing around and singing in her smoky contralto, "I've been a bad, bad girl..." Later that year, after being awarded Best New Artist by MTV, she got on stage and said, "This world is bullshit," to the shocked silence of the crowd and everyone tuning in.
Prior to 2005, those were my only impressions of Fiona Apple1. Those are probably still the only impressions of Fiona Apple of most people today. Because although she's put out three more albums since then, none have come close to the triple-platinum blockbuster that her debut effort scored. Most people probably think of Fiona Apple as a one-hit wonder, just another shock artist with her five minutes of fame, which is probably totally fine with her as well.
Her music is difficult to categorize. Her Wikipedia lists: piano rock, baroque pop, jazz, alternative rock, and experimental rock. The truth is it's probably all of the above. What makes Fiona Apple one of the great musical artists of my generation is the utterly unique style birthed from that veritable potpourri. Her songs and albums are not easily digestible. They're sometimes discordant and harsh and lack identifiable hooks which immediately disqualify them from any sort of popular radio station air-time. Her lyrics and the rhythms they're sung at defies rock/pop conventions. And yet, if you give it a few spins, bits and pieces of her songs will pop into your cranial jukebox randomly when you're, like, walking down the street or something. Perhaps the scene in front of you or the turmoil you're struggling with in your heart will trigger a recall of a snippet of her beautiful metaphors. And then so you go back and fire up the album and listen again, more carefully this time, and with your meticulousness, more of the song reveals itself to you. Her words gain context. The layered instruments and her powerful warbling voice drive it home. And you find yourself astonished at its depths, its complexity, its poetic artistry, and just how vastly more awesome it is to have spent the effort to appreciate a Fiona Apple song versus the usual sugary pop fare replete with generic and hollow lyrics that saturate the Top 40.
'Raw' is overused to describe an artist or musician's live act. But when I was watching Fiona Apple perform that night, I couldn't think of a more fitting word. Her diminutive, borderline anorexic frame and the child-like way she shuffles around on stage between songs belies the vocal force generated by her lungs and her unguarded propensity to let the music possess her during long instrumental segments. During one stretch, she backed up against the baby grand, eyes shut tight, arms arched backwards perching against it as if resisting a physical assault from the sonic boom blasting out of guitarist Blake Mills's2 amps. Then she rhythmically wilted until she was on her knees, kow-towing and writhing, seemingly begging for mercy and simultaneously begging for more, more, more, don't stop, don't ever stop. During the penultimate song of her set, Not About Love, she and her band paused for a couple of long stretches, creating awkward periods of silence that the crowd wasn't sure how to react to, while she rocked back and forth violently on her piano chair, powering up, before unleashing the chorus in a shocking primal scream, "This is not about love!!!" that would've put Linkin Park to shame.
For 90 minutes, Fiona Apple gave the proverbial 110% of herself to us, her lyrics, her performance, rendered completely and without compromise, cutting herself open on stage to connect with us as a human being, saying this is who I am, all my sorrows and pains and travails and attempts to reconcile my messed up self with this crazy world. And then she said, "Thank you. Thank you guys. I will miss you," and waved that innocent wave, smiling shyly, and walked off stage without coming back for an encore despite our raucous cheers and applause and cries of bravissima! Bravissima!
_____________
1Until I bought a copy of her third album, Extraordinary Machine, and became a full-fledged fan, following the course of evolution detailed in the paragraph below.
2A quick plug here for Blake Mills , who also opened for Fiona. He is a bad man with the ax, a certified virtuoso and improviser that played a huge role in making the live performance of Fiona's songs edgier, more ragged, and more intense than their original album versions.
***
Fiona Apple rocketed to pop stardom in 1996 with her hit single Criminal -- more specifically, the music video of Criminal, which featured a barely legal Fiona in her panties writhing around and singing in her smoky contralto, "I've been a bad, bad girl..." Later that year, after being awarded Best New Artist by MTV, she got on stage and said, "This world is bullshit," to the shocked silence of the crowd and everyone tuning in.
Prior to 2005, those were my only impressions of Fiona Apple1. Those are probably still the only impressions of Fiona Apple of most people today. Because although she's put out three more albums since then, none have come close to the triple-platinum blockbuster that her debut effort scored. Most people probably think of Fiona Apple as a one-hit wonder, just another shock artist with her five minutes of fame, which is probably totally fine with her as well.
Her music is difficult to categorize. Her Wikipedia lists: piano rock, baroque pop, jazz, alternative rock, and experimental rock. The truth is it's probably all of the above. What makes Fiona Apple one of the great musical artists of my generation is the utterly unique style birthed from that veritable potpourri. Her songs and albums are not easily digestible. They're sometimes discordant and harsh and lack identifiable hooks which immediately disqualify them from any sort of popular radio station air-time. Her lyrics and the rhythms they're sung at defies rock/pop conventions. And yet, if you give it a few spins, bits and pieces of her songs will pop into your cranial jukebox randomly when you're, like, walking down the street or something. Perhaps the scene in front of you or the turmoil you're struggling with in your heart will trigger a recall of a snippet of her beautiful metaphors. And then so you go back and fire up the album and listen again, more carefully this time, and with your meticulousness, more of the song reveals itself to you. Her words gain context. The layered instruments and her powerful warbling voice drive it home. And you find yourself astonished at its depths, its complexity, its poetic artistry, and just how vastly more awesome it is to have spent the effort to appreciate a Fiona Apple song versus the usual sugary pop fare replete with generic and hollow lyrics that saturate the Top 40.
***
'Raw' is overused to describe an artist or musician's live act. But when I was watching Fiona Apple perform that night, I couldn't think of a more fitting word. Her diminutive, borderline anorexic frame and the child-like way she shuffles around on stage between songs belies the vocal force generated by her lungs and her unguarded propensity to let the music possess her during long instrumental segments. During one stretch, she backed up against the baby grand, eyes shut tight, arms arched backwards perching against it as if resisting a physical assault from the sonic boom blasting out of guitarist Blake Mills's2 amps. Then she rhythmically wilted until she was on her knees, kow-towing and writhing, seemingly begging for mercy and simultaneously begging for more, more, more, don't stop, don't ever stop. During the penultimate song of her set, Not About Love, she and her band paused for a couple of long stretches, creating awkward periods of silence that the crowd wasn't sure how to react to, while she rocked back and forth violently on her piano chair, powering up, before unleashing the chorus in a shocking primal scream, "This is not about love!!!" that would've put Linkin Park to shame.
For 90 minutes, Fiona Apple gave the proverbial 110% of herself to us, her lyrics, her performance, rendered completely and without compromise, cutting herself open on stage to connect with us as a human being, saying this is who I am, all my sorrows and pains and travails and attempts to reconcile my messed up self with this crazy world. And then she said, "Thank you. Thank you guys. I will miss you," and waved that innocent wave, smiling shyly, and walked off stage without coming back for an encore despite our raucous cheers and applause and cries of bravissima! Bravissima!
_____________
1Until I bought a copy of her third album, Extraordinary Machine, and became a full-fledged fan, following the course of evolution detailed in the paragraph below.
2A quick plug here for Blake Mills , who also opened for Fiona. He is a bad man with the ax, a certified virtuoso and improviser that played a huge role in making the live performance of Fiona's songs edgier, more ragged, and more intense than their original album versions.
