Fiona Apple - "Hot Knife (Dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

At the time of its release "Hot Knife," the closing track from The Idler Wheel (my favourite album of 2012), was an unexpected move, a brilliant way to end an already brilliant album. It's a catchy, upbeat, R&B-infused, almost-accapella battle between Fiona Apple and her ego. More surprising, however, is her new video and its acclaimed director, her ex-partner, Paul Thomas Anderson, who directed several of her best videos back in the early 2000s. The result is restrained, but just about as conflicted as you'd want it to be.

My top 5 of 2012

1. Fiona Apple made an incredible album

Like Frank Ocean's channel Orange, Fiona Apple's fourth full length, The Idler Wheel is Wiser than the Turner of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do was something most critics could get behind regardless of bias. Unlike the circumstances that surrounded Apple's previous releases, the press actually seemed ready for something this emotionally raw and thematically bizarre. The awkward release of Extraordinary Machine in 2005 (prefaced by the leak of demos from 2004, which sounded more like collaborations between Apple and her then producer Jon Brion) led to an uneven album, as well as a minor split between fans who preferred the new arrangements with Mike Elizondo and the fans who believed Apple's earlier demos with Brion to be superior.

I fell into the latter category, and I remember being blown away by the Extraordinary Machine demos; they made good on the promise of 1999's When the Pawn... (which arguably remains Apple's best record) and took her songwriting in a much stranger direction. Brion's signature in the productions was unmistakable. The songs were dark and despairing, but Brion's orchestral arrangements achieved a balance between the ruthlessness of Apple's musical ambition and her mad swell of romantic energy. Apple's concern, and the reason why the album was delayed and reworked before its proper release, was that Brion's compositions overshadowed her songwriting. Upon re-listening, Apple seems wholly justified and it's clear that she's been careful to avoid the same problems since.

Musically, The Idler Wheel... is Fiona Apple's sparest record. The accompaniment of percussion (and any instrumentation beyond the piano) serves her material, which is always jarringly personal and, for that reason, always slightly askew. As The Onion's AV Club review put it, "the production feels compulsive, not calculated." This distinction works to describe most of the album, and I'd argue that Jon Brion's earlier work with Apple achieved the same effect despite working from the opposite direction. Apple's persona is dangerously excessive. In this year's Valentine's Day post, I suggested that for Apple, love always occurs at a pathological level. The point is distilled throughout the songs of The Idler Wheel..., but the line that lays it out best occurs in its centrepiece: the playful, sporadic "Left Alone." "How could I ask anyone to love me," Apple realizes, "when all I do is beg to be left alone." The whole "I'm my own worst enemy" thing is one of the worst pop culture cliches, and though Apple's project frequently suggests as much, she avoids reducing her emotions to the rational and the obvious.

2012 was peppered with news about Apple's run-in with the law, her touching responses to fans, and her tour cancellation (she wanted to spend time with her dog who was dying of cancer). (My favourite interview/article, which celebrated her as a "musical hermit" came courtesy of New York Magazine.) The headlines were amusing but The Idler Wheel... provides us with a self-portrait of real depth, and it has album artwork to match (assembled from a stack of designs and doodles that Apple gave to her record company). As an amateur critic, I can say without reservation that The Idler Wheel... is Apple's strongest and most cohesive artistic statement yet. As a longtime fan, I can also say that she's finally delivered on her promise in a style and format that allows her songwriting to thrive. I've always had pretty strong convictions with regard to Fiona Apple and it's nice to finally see internet buzz machine working in her favour. God knows she deserves it.

Fiona Apple: "Left Alone"


2. The "garage rock" revival revival













Remember popular music in 2001? Remember the attempts of taste-making dinosaurs like Rolling Stone and Spin to market a "return" to rock and roll, despite proclamations by major bands like Radiohead that "rock is dead"? Looking back, the connection between the changing face of music journalism and new trends in popular music has to be made. For the teenage me, those rags were the real engines that drove musical exploration; they were resources, guides, and often oracles for the next big thing. But by the turn of the millennium, they were also becoming outdated and increasingly selective. So it makes sense that a return to the hallowed tradition of rock (in bands like The White Stripes, The Vines, The Strokes, Interpol, and countless others) would give magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone a boost.

All this preamble, simply to say that 2012 saw a minor surge in critically successful albums that bear some resemblance to the garage rock revival of yesteryear. Or, at least they pick up where some of those other bands left off, which is also to say that despite the seeming groundswell of 2001, garage rock has never really gone away. My favourite "rock" albums of this year came from retro outfits like Tame Impala, The Men, Thee Oh Sees (who've been plugging away for the better half of a decade), and their prolific wunderkind pal, Ty Segall.

Australia's Tame Impala released their debut back in 2010. It was an awesome mess of pop hooks and psychedelic guitar effects. Lonerism works with the same kind of energy, but this time around there's a focussed theme and the songs are simply tighter. In a similar way, Putrifiers II is Thee Oh Sees at their most polished and listenable. If indie rock has a sound that it should striving for, it's captured by Thee Oh Sees. Songs like "Floods New Light" and "Wax Face" are exceedingly ballsy jams, while "Wicker Park" closes Putrifiers II with an amusing swell of strings that makes for a comic conclusion to a very different sounding album. It would be easy to describe Thee Oh Sees' sound as "disaffected" but there's plenty of feeling here; it's just that most of the time, it's put in its proper place, amid all the bullshit.

Tame Impala: "Mind Mischief"

Thee Oh Sees: "Wax Face"


3. The year of the loner

Along with a glimpse of Fiona Apple's brooding ego and Tame Impala's sonic embrace of alienation, Sharon Van Etten's Tramp gave the loner in me plenty to chew on. Folk singer-songwriters are a dime a dozen, but Van Etten (like Fiona Apple) demonstrates how compelling one can be in the wake of failed relationships: she stands as a flawed source of resolve, but also site of doubt and despair. Tramp is easily Van Etten's best, and as title might suggest, the album isn't simply a breakup record; it's about a compulsion toward heartbreak and isolation, the passage in and out of relationships, over and over again. It's a dozen breakup albums rolled into one. No surprise, then, that Tramp is at times ridiculously sad. "Warsaw" opens the album with a resounding note of futility. Moments later, the chorus of "Give Out" finds Van Etten mourning her relationship before it even takes off: "you're the reason why I'll move to the city, you're why I'll need to leave." The comparatively upbeat lead single, "Serpents," continues in a similar tone, addressing the speaker's self-projections head-on through a former partner who "hold[s] the mirror to everybody else." Every one of Tramp's songs is heartbreaking (even "We Are Fine," her decisively optimistic duet with Beirut's Zach Condon) and it's hard not to be swept away by the power of Van Etten's emotional despair. So, in conclusion, be careful with this one.

Sharon Van Etten: "Give Out"


4. Est. Brooklyn, 2009













Speaking of history repeating itself, 2012 saw the release of new albums from three of the biggest Brooklyn indie bands and one of its most overlooked, each of whom released their previous (breakthrough) full length in 2009. Unlike all the critical fanfare that accompanied Merriweather Post Pavilion, Animal Collective's latest record, Centipede Hz, came and went without much notice. Grizzly Bear and the Dirty Projectors, on the other hand, released some of their best material. Since 2006's Yellow House, I've been a big fan of Grizzly Bear and I was prepared for an album that would continue in the direction of Veckatimest. For better or worse, Shields does not do that. Initially, I found it rather dull and bleak. It took some time, but once I had an access point ("Yet Again"), Shields became an expansive record, full of some really epic moments. The compositions are dense and meandering, while the conceptual terrain is equally dark and plodding. For me, this resulted in what was probably the most immersive listening experience of the year. With Shields, Grizzly Bear has created a rich and sombre world, one that I couldn't easily escape and still don't really want to.

David Longstreth's latest with the Dirty Projectors marches forward with a less totalizing and more optimistic outlook. The songs on Swing Lo Magellan mark a real improvement over 2009's Bitte Orca (which I still consider to be one of the previous decade's best albums) because they take what's best about the Dirty Projectors' sound, composition, and approach and make it personable. The pretence of Longstreth's lyrics has also been toned down (though he did follow the example of Kanye's "Runaway" video and direct a eccentric half-hour film based on the album). And although the song structures are slightly more conventional than they have been, this approach finds the Dirty Projectors at their best.

Unlike the big three I've mentioned, Here We Go Magic hasn't really been subject to the hype of the indie music buzz machine. Their 2009 debut drew equally from the baroque pop of Grizzly Bear and the DIY electronica of Animal Collective. This time around, however, we get a crisp and restrained sounding record that takes its nautical title (A Different Ship) quite seriously. Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich assists with an album that is at times energetic ("I Believe In Action"), unabashedly romantic ("How Do I Know"), and perfectly subtle ("Over the Ocean," "Alone But Moving," "Miracle of Mary"). The latter, slower ballads leave me thinking that frontman Luke Temple has been listening to a lot of Talk Talk, and one can never listen to too much Talk Talk.

Dirty Projectors: "Gun Has No Trigger"

Grizzly Bear: "Sun In Your Eyes"
Here We Go Magic: "Over the Ocean"


5. R&B is very cool right now

This one is pretty self-explanatory. 

My favourite albums from 2012

1. The Idler Wheel ... - Fiona Apple
2. Lonerism - Tame Impala
3. Putrifiers II - Thee Oh Sees
4. Tramp - Sharon Van Etten
5. A Different Ship - Here We Go Magic
6. Swing Lo Magellan - Dirty Projectors
7. Shields - Grizzly Bear
8. Spooky Action at a Distance - Lotus Plaza
9. Hair - Ty Segall & White Fence, Twins - Ty Segall, Slaughterhouse - Ty Segall Band
10. Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend! - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
11. Total Loss - How to Dress Well
12. Animal Joy - Shearwater
13. Sweet Heart Sweet Light - Spiritualized
14. The Haunted Man - Bat for Lashes
15. Open Your Heart - The Men
16. 2 - Mac Demarco
17. Oshin - DIIV
18. channel Orange - Frank Ocean
19. Nootropics - Lower Dens
20. Moms - Menomena

Some favourite music videos from 2012

New Music from Fiona Apple, Cat Power, Sharon Van Etten

Two of my favorite artists have returned from obscurity with some of their best material in over a decade; and a fresher face, who's released her third album in three years back in February, fills out the trio of my favorite singer-songwriter albums of the year (so far). The two veterans--Fiona Apple and Cat Power's Chan Marshall--are both coming off long breaks. Marshall will be releasing Sun, her first batch of new songs in over six years, in September, while Apple, who has remained relatively silent for the last seven years, released her fourth album, The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do, last week.

The hype surrounding Apple's release is well-deserved: she's one of the most interesting songwriters around, she has a distinct and beautiful voice, and this is her strongest collection of material to date. She's also maintained her weirdness, still balancing somewhere in between the jazz lounge and the psych ward. Among the many features and interviews that have accompanied her return to the spotlight, this lengthy piece from New York Magazine's culture section is a moving account of Apple's current batch of neuroses and her ambiguous development as a young, MTV-approved sex-symbol to uncompromising, reclusive genius.



When it comes to style and delivery, Cat Power's Chan Marshall is less resistant than Apple to change and experimentation. 2006's The Greatest was Marshall's attempt to ground herself in Memphis style R&B, eschewing the folk-rock moniker for something a more polished and traditional. The results were mixed and surprisingly uninspired (given the list of "greats" she was working with), especially when it came to her songwriting. Still something of a crossover success, The Greatest did prove to be her most successful album, but, for me at least, it fell far short of her previous classics, 1998's Moon Pix and 2003's You Are Free. Since then she's released a similarly stylized album of covers (2008's Jukebox), split with her hubby, had her house foreclosed, and has ditched her guitar-based songwriting for something fresher. "Ruin," the first single off Sun (featured below), is bold and upbeat, while the recently leaked "Cherokee" begins with a more familiar wash of piano and guitar before a driving hip-hop beat takes over, turning Marshall's broken-hearted confession into an anthemic ode to the sky.



If Cat Power has ditched Marshall's folk-rock approach, Sharon Van Etten gives it new life on Tramp, her third and best album to date. Like Marshall and Apple, Van Etten is an introspective songwriter with a meek but captivating vocal delivery. After three strong efforts, and some help from her high-profile pals (from Beirut's Zach Condon to Shearwater to fellow Brooklyners TV on the Radio), Van Etten has become one of the most consistent young singer-songwriters around. She's a bit on the mopey side, but so are the best of them.

Fiona Apple and a pathology called "love"

Last week, a friend's passing reference to Fiona Apple as one of Lana Del Rey's predecessors got me up in arms. I've been listening to Apple's 2005 album, Extraordinary Machine, a lot lately, and rumors about her long-awaited follow-up, which could be released a few months from now, have also just begun to circulate.Valentine's Day seems like the right occasion to rehash some of the reasons why I find her music so interesting, and why I go on the defensive when I hear her get linked to other popular female singer-songwriters.

"Not About Love" - Jon Brion's unreleased version: 

The controversy surrounding Extraordinary Machine's release is a bit muddy, but it'll help to explain why I felt it necessary to post two very different versions of the same song above. Originally thought to be delayed because Apple's label, Sony, doubted its commercial viability, the long awaited album had fans writing letters and mailing apples to label execs as part of the "Free Fiona" campaign (my roommate at the time was peripherally involved through his Fiona Apple message board--we even had a "Free Fiona" poster on the door of our dorm room). As it turns out, there was an original version, produced by Jon Brion, that was shelved because Apple wasn't happy with it; she then reworked most of the songs with a different producer (Mike Elizondo) and released the album.

Elizondo's finished product was still a good collection of songs, but the unreleased version with arrangements by Jon Brion (the demos of which had leaked several months before the official version came out) was, at least in my eyes, clearly superior. Apple felt that Brion's instrumentation had nearly taken over her songs: as such, they represented his musical taste more than they did her artistic identity (The two versions of "Not About Love," posted above, are a great example of this). But, for me, Brion's production accented the strangeness of Apple's romantic vision. What ended up sounding like sugary pop on the Sony's official release had a much darker, perverse quality to it when accompanied with Brion's string arrangements. The songs on his version of Extraordinary Machine nearly collapse under their own weight. If it's really "not about love" for Apple, it's because it's impossible for her to align herself with the security of conventional romance: instead, the kind of consuming love she articulates is pathological ("Get Him Back"), at times violent ("Window"), and often turns out to be solipsistic ("Better Version of Me"). Here's what's probably the best example of what I'm trying to get at.

And, naturally, with all this talk of psychosis, and narcissism, I think of Zizek, whose Lacanian remarks on love are, I think, realized in some of Fiona Apple's more compelling songs:

More generally, when one is passionately in love and, after not seeing the beloved for a long time, asks her for a photo to keep in mind her features, the true aim of this request is not to check if the properties of the beloved still fits the criteria of my live, but, on the contrary, to learn (again) what these criteria are. I am in love absolutely, and the photo a priori CANNOT be a disappointment - I need it just so that it will tell me WHAT I love... What this means is that true love is performative in the sense that it CHANGES its object - not in the sense of idealization, but in the sense of opening up a gap in it, a gap between the object's positive properties and the agalma, the mysterious core of the beloved (which is why I do not love you because of your properties which are worthy of love: on the contrary, it is only because of my love for you that your features appear to me as worthy of love). It is for this reason that finding oneself in the position of the beloved is so violent, traumatic even: being loved makes me feel directly the gap between what I am as a determinate being and the unfathomable X in me which causes love. Everyone knows Lacan's definition of love ("Love is giving something one doesn't have..."); what one often forgets is to add the other half which completes the sentence: "... to someone who doesn't want it." And is this not confirmed by our most elementary experience when somebody unexpectedly declared passionate love to us - is not the first reaction, preceding the possible positive reply, that something obscene, intrusive, is being forced upon us?

In a kind of Hegelian twist, love does not simply open itself up for the unfathomable abyss in the beloved object; what is in the beloved "more than him/herself," the presupposed excess of/in the beloved, is reflexively posited by love itself. Which is why true love is far from the openness to the "transcendent mystery of the beloved Other": true love is well aware that, as Hegel would have put it, the excess of the beloved, what, in the beloved, eludes my grasp, is the very place of the inscription of my own desire into the beloved object - transcendence is the form of appearance of immanence. As the melodramatic wisdom puts it, it is love itself, the fact of being loved, that ultimately makes the beloved beautiful.

 From With or Without Passion: What's Wrong with Fundamentalism. Part 1.

love is just a four letter word

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? (from High Fidelity)

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, another stupid holiday that, like Halloween, made more sense when I was seven than it does now: handing out my cheap, superhero-themed Valentine's cards at school and carefully preparing my own special Valentine's card receptacle like the rest my classmates. I could get behind that.

These days, the obvious thing to do is make a list of my favourite break-up songs. Some are laughable, others are frightening, but all of them share the same heaping spoonful of self-pity.

1. Here - Pavement
"And I'm the only one who laughs / at your jokes when they are so bad / and your jokes are always bad / but they're not as bad as this."

2. Divorce Song - Liz Phair
"I would have stayed in your bed / For the rest of my life / Just to prove I was right / That it's harder to be friends than lovers / And you shouldn't try to mix the two / Cause if you do it and you're still unhappy / Then you know that the problem is you / And its true that I stole your lighter / And its also true that I lost the map / But when you said that I wasn't worth talking to / I had to take your word on that."

3. Nobody's Fault But My Own - Beck
"And on the day you said it's true / Some love holds, some gets used / Tried to tell you I never knew / It could be so sweet / Who could ever be so cruel, / Blame the devil for the things you do / It's such a selfish way to lose / The way you lose these wasted blues / These wasted blues."

4. I Don't Want To Get Over You - Magnetic Fields
"I could listen to my therapist, pretend you don't exist / and not have to dream of what I dream of; I could listen / to all my friends and go out again and pretend it's enough, / or I could make a career of being blue."

5. Rid of Me - PJ Harvey
"You're not rid of me . . . . Till you say don't you wish you never never met her."

6. Pink Triangle - Weezer
"When I think I've found a good old-fashioned girl / Then she put me in my place / If everyone's / a little queer / Can't she be a little straight?"

7. Damage - Yo La Tengo
"The damage is done."

8. Cato As A Pun - Of Montreal
"I can't even pretend that you are my friend / What has happened to you and I / And don't say that I have changed / 'Cause man, of course I have"

9. Get Gone - Fiona Apple
"You got your game, made your shot, and you got away / With a lot, but I'm not turned-on / So put away that meat you're selling."

10. Forever For Her (Is Over For Me) - White Stripes
"I blew it / And if I knew what to do, then I'd do it / But the point that I have, I'll get to it / And forever for her is over for me / Forever, just the word that she said that means never / To be with / another together / And with the weight of a feather it tore into me"

(Honourary Mention) An Ode To No One - Smashing Pumpkins
"I took a virgin mary axe to his sweet baby jane, / lost my innocence to a no good girl, scratch my / face with anvil hands, and coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth /And I give it all back to you." Alright Billy. I'm sure it all makes sense in your head.