After When the Pawn… came out, Apple sort of disappeared. Then several years later, in a New York Times magazine interview, producer Jon Brion spoke in glowing terms about new tracks they’d recorded for an album to be called Extraordinary Machine. No release date was set.
Months passed and still no word on the new album. Rumors circulated that the studio wasn’t happy with the songs and refused to release it. But no word from Apple herself.
Choosing another song from When the Pawn… is both a simple and an impossible task. There are no bad choices, but how do you narrow it down to one? Today’s track, ‘The Way Things Are,’ is the first of a trio of songs that finish off the album (the closing track, ‘I Know,’ has already been featured as a Song of the Day — though the YouTube gods have since removed the video from rotation).
One thing that’s increasingly clear after listening to a lot of Apple’s music is that she must be one hell of a difficult girlfriend. So many of her songs pause in the midst of trashing some hapless man to point the finger back at herself. She even has a song called ‘Fast As You Can’ which advises a potential beau to get the hell away from her for his own good.
I was a pretty big fan of Apple’s based on Tidal alone but when her second album came out the whole game changed.
When the Pawn…, as it is popularly known (the full title is a 90-word poem), is quite simply one of the greatest albums I’ve ever heard. And experiencing it for the first time was an unexpected pleasure. When I buy a new album, particularly the sophomore release of a young artist, I’m hoping to like it, maybe even love it — I’m never expecting a masterpiece. But that’s exactly what I got.
This week’s featured artist, Fiona Apple, is one of my very favorite singer-songwriters… and I stress both halves of that phrase — she is extraordinarily talented as both a singer and a writer of songs. I think a lot of artists tend to excel at one more than the other, but I place her in the top ranks of both categories.
What I find most interesting is the impact she has had on me through just three studio albums, just 32 songs. I guess that’s all it takes when the albums are as good as hers. But still, 32 songs in 13 years just doesn’t seem right. Get thee to a piano, woman!
I could go on forever about Fiona Apple, one of my very favorite artists. She’s released only three albums in 12 years but still ranks at the very top of a very long list. Hell, she’s even one of the inspirations for my youngest daughter’s name (it’s Fiona… we didn’t pull a Gwyneth Paltrow).
Apple has done a lot of these record store appearances, many of which are available on YouTube. This one if a cover of ‘After You’ve Gone,’ a tune from the early 20th century. I believe that is producer extraordinaire Jon Brion playing the guitar beside her.
Meet Me In Montauk 