On April 17, 2020, a series of jingling keys penetrated me, and like many people, I am grateful. Fiona Apple gives us gifts for her fifth album Bolt cutting machine The pandemic was only five weeks away. The artist was originally scheduled for a fall release, so he decided to give up early. Maybe music can keep the listener’s company, or as she told Condorhelp “find your feelings”.
Propheticly speaking, the album almost reflects what we experience in real time: the chaos of human interaction is with each other on 24/7 (“Drumset”), a fantasy band together in a depressed environment (“heavy balloon”), and the underlying feeling of “Let me be the hell here!!!”. This meanders throughout the album (but especially in the title track).
In those long and dark spring times, my best friend’s text threads will be asked to take care of themselves, inspired by the heroine, who soothe our buzzing brains: “Well, Fiona Army! We’re going to do 20 push-ups today!!!” My cooking is more than I want to recite her cooking with her ears, and it’s my resentment to the newly discovered family. It’s a lifeguard when I drowned in the ocean of endless crushed tomatoes. She sang to me as I was caring for the sky, and only a few other passengers were reunited with my mother in a spacious commercial flight, who happened to be the gorgeous and eventually sick mother for the first time in six months.
I stared at the empty row of seats, staring from behind my planted mask,”“Because you and I will be like a few astronauts/more gravity than we did when we started.” Apple repeated. As always, her words were amazingly prescient. – Juanna Solotaroff
