Top Songs of 2012 – #3

I’ve been pleased to see Fiona Apple’s latest album (after a seven year break) sitting at or near the to of one critic’s list after another.

The Idler Wheel… is a dark and difficult record but a deeply rewarding one. It epitomizes what it means to create art through popular music and it’s the best album I heard all year.

It’s difficult to single out one song on this album, because they all feel very much part of the whole. But ‘Jonathan,’ Apple’s reminiscence of ex-boyfriend author Jonathan Ames, feels like a good representative.

Apple marries two piano riffs — one discordant and one upbeat — to approximate the up-and-down nature of the relationship. The only other instrumentation, as on much of The Idler Wheel…, is provided by the percussion of found sounds and the avant garde drum work of Apple’s co-producer Charley Drayton.

Apple has never seemed so in command of her art as she does on this album, even as her vocal performances brim with emotional turmoil and chaos. As a writer and performer, she is simply on another level than most artists working today.