by Emma Bauchner (@EmBauch)
Two months ago, the release of Fiona Apple’s long-awaited fifth album seemed to bring the entire music community to a glowing consensus. Fetch the Bolt Cutters received universal acclaim—it’s the second highest-rated album of all time on Metacritic—and was embraced by so many listeners and critics alike that it almost seemed too good to be true. Now that the initial wave of hype has died down and the dust has settled somewhat, some may be asking the question: does the album continue to hold up? Did the album’s quarantine-friendly themes and storied Pitchfork perfect 10 score not contribute to its incredibly widespread success? Is it truly the masterpiece we all declared it to be?
In a word, yes. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a uniquely special album, and its coincidental timeliness doesn’t detract from that one bit. Its significance as an artistic statement—both within Apple’s catalogue and within a larger musical context—will far outlast the year-end lists that it is sure to top.
Part of what makes Fetch the Bolt Cutters so masterful is its fiercely organic rhythmic backbone. Apple’s music has always been defined by rhythm, and this time she chose to build it from the ground up, using pots and pans, the walls of her home, empty cans, seedpods, and even the bones of her deceased dog alongside her piano, Sebastian Steinberg’s upright bass, and Amy Aileen Wood’s drumming, to create the album’s percussive, driving rhythm section. The resulting songs have so much movement and momentum that listening to them is more like observing a process than consuming a finished product, creating a sound that is paradoxically both striking and intimate. Apple’s music has a way of inviting you into the ceaseless kinetic energy of her raw musical landscape, and on this album, you can feel its cadence in the core of your bones.
Lyrically the album is just as remarkable. It’s no surprise that Apple’s lyrics are as poetic, moving, and witty as ever, nor that she continues to write from a distinctly female perspective. However, where on previous albums she leaned into vulnerability, on Fetch the Bolt Cutters she instead centers female strength. The album is filled with unabashed proclamations of unapologetic existence: “Kick me under the table all you want / I won’t shut up”; “I spread like strawberries / I climb like peas and greens”; and of course “Fetch the bolt cutters / I’ve been in here too long”. Apple also expands her scope beyond herself: on songs like “Shameika,” “Newspaper,” and “Ladies,” she explores the complexities of some of her relationships to other women—the girl from middle school whose words she still remembers, the women her former lovers have moved on to. On “For Her”—a song that is by no means easy to listen to but is undeniably one of the album’s best—Apple powerfully brings testimony to another woman’s experience of sexual assault. Throughout this diverse yet cohesive set of songs, Apple channels a colorful range of emotions—longing, restlessness, defiance, resentment, pride, anger—but at the heart of all of them is undeniable confidence and strength, tied to a spirit of self-liberation.
Let’s face it: there’s very little that can be said about Fetch the Bolt Cutters that hasn’t been said already. The truth is that it’s an album we collectively can’t stop talking about, and will continue to be talked about for months, years, even decades to come. It rejects categorization but invites engagement, comes from one of music’s most distinctive voices yet resonates universally. Sure, the fact that it feels sonically and lyrically like a soundtrack to self-liberation makes it all the more pertinent during a time when we are spending a lot more time in our own minds than we’re accustomed to—and yet it’s so much more than that. It’s hard to imagine how Apple could top this, but I predict her brilliance will continue to surprise us.