I was taken with the girl the first time I saw her singing live on some TV show several years ago. The juxtaposition of her small, almost helpless frame and the hostage-like look on her face with the words and the sound of the words coming out of that little mouth were enough to put a pin-up in my head for days afterwards. I was almost afraid to actually listen to a full CD of the music. That sticky note previously placed on my brain had a footnote that said something like "danger."
Soon thereafter, my daughter brought home the Tidal CD and said something to the effect of, "You should listen to this." I think it might have been a threat. We were at one of those impasses that happen in the teen years, and it might have been her way to show me just how much I didn't understand her. Fortunately, it turned out that I loved the CD and now, several years later, we still listen to Fiona on almost every car trip we're forced to take together. On the last such trip, the annual Christmas trip to see the relatives who never bother to come see us and which makes us all at least once ask the obligatory question, "Why in the hell are we doing this?" she had the newest CD.
Expectations were high, since she and I had pretty much decided that there would be no outdoing When The Pawn.... I mean, once you've heard a song like "Fast as You Can," how could you expect more auditory delight from any one little white girl like her? And once you've felt the emotional sucker punch of a song like "Get Gone," how could you expect any more depth from a person her age?
I liked When the Pawn... better than I liked Tidal because it seemed as if she had become more of an adult when it came to the feelings she was such an expert in peeling back with little or no antiseptic. I may still like When the Pawn... better than this CD, but that is not to say that Extraordinary Machine won't stand the test of time even stronger than any of her efforts thus far. I certainly wouldn't bet against it.
The title song is the first cut on the CD, and it is without a doubt the most quirky tune I've ever heard her write. As with the best of her work, and this is important, you can imagine this song existing in a very huge expanse of potential timeframes. This is actually the most appealing thing about Fiona Apple's music. Bob Dylan has made it perfectly clear how he feels about this subject. He thinks that almost every modern American musician has totally lost touch with the roots of what American music means. If you saw Masked and Anonymous you know what I mean by this. Seeing him play a rousing version of Dixie is about all you need to understand how his music is rooted way, way back, and how he likely finds very little inspiration from any contemporaries. His backup band when he was in what was probably his prime was The Band. Have you ever listened to The Band? Tell me what era that music comes from. Somewhere in the American 1800s, right?
Along these lines, it would seem that Fiona has taken it one step further. You hear a song like "Extraordinary Machine" and you could imagine it being played in the late 1800s in Europe or in the early 2400s on some newly colonized planet far away from here. You just can't timestamp her best songs. Does that make her a better songwriter and performer than Bob Dylan? In some ways, yes, it does. She'll have to accumulate quite a large body of work before she can stand up on that mountain, but she's well on her way and I can only wish her all the luck in the world.
I will let kerawall, our resident E2 Fiona fan, give you her usually spot-on takes on the individual songs on this CD, and I'm sure she will delve into all the subterfuge and mystery surrounding this CD which might or might not have been in the can for years due to typical underhanded dealings by recording companies. Isn't it a great feeling on E2 to know that you can count on an excellent write-up on a specific topic by a certain user if you're just patient enough? As for myself, I'd just like to tell you what songs I find most valuable on here.
~~~ "O' Sailor", the third cut, has the best hook to my ear. The tune involves being the dumpee of a maritime lover. "Saying there's nothing to it and letting it go by the boards." She can turn what would be a cliché in lesser hands into high art. It's partly the sound of the song and it's partly the context of the larger effort itself. This happens time and time again in this compilation as well as her earlier work.
~~~ "Tymps" has the excellent image of, "Why did I kiss him so hard late last Friday night?" culminating with, "I just really used to love him / (I sure hope that's it)." If there's ever been a better song about make-up sex, I'd like to hear it.
~~~ I'm made a bit uncomfortable by the image of her opening her eyes while being kissed in "Parting Gift." I've caught a girl doing that before, and I hope I didn't look "just as sincere as a dog does." At the same time, I'm sure I've been considered a "silly, stupid pastime" of some lady somewhere. And I'm just as sure her friends were giving her this sort of advice, sung so sincerely, here:
"They said 'stop'
But we went on whole-hearted
It ended bad
But I love what we started."
~~~ The first song that caught my eye on here was "Please, Please, Please." It has that feel I fell in love with while listening to "Fast as You Can" on the previous release. As she's readily willing to admit, "My method is uncertain. It's a mess but it's working." Yes, it's working quite well and I can fully understand how this girl thinks it's just a mess at this point. I can imagine her imagining quite larger things in her notebooks and on her tapes at home, and I just hope her frail form survives the trip. The ending verse of this song pretty much sums up what she and Bob Dylan and I all seem to have in common when it comes to how we feel about most of the music we hear these days. The folks who don't care for this CD might be saying to themselves,
"Give me something familiar
Somethin' similar
To what we know already
That will keep us steady."
To which she would correctly reply,
"Steady, steady
Steady going nowhere."