Fiona Apple's songs have been done for a YEAR
Fiona Apple at Largo: "My New Songs Have Been Done for a Year"
By Jay Caspian King
A few months ago, I went to go watch Jon Brion at the Largo Theater here
in Los Angeles. Brion is a notoriously eccentric composer and producer
- his credits include Kanye’s Late Registration, Aimee Mann’s I’m with Stupid,
and the soundtrack to Magnolia. Which is all very impressive, I
suppose, but the reason why I went to watch Brion at the Largo was
because I had heard that every once in a while, Fiona Apple shows up to
play a few songs. (Brion also produced Apple’s When the Pawn...) Sadly,
the show’s guest was a totally okay woman in thick-rimmed glasses who
sang a bit blandly about Tina Fey and wanting babies.
Brion’s set started shortly afterwards. There were somewhere between ten and
fifteen instruments on stage. Brion, of course, managed to play all of
them. And although he did this just fine, the show was never anything
more than a very skilled man playing a bunch of instruments very
skillfully. There’s a fine line between genius and the convincing
affectation of genius and Brion, with his Glenn Gould humming, his
somewhat funny jokes, his constant futzing around and his ejaculatory
guitar playing, fell safely on the bad side of that spectrum. Walking
to my car, I said that I felt as if I had been assaulted by the
insistence of talent and then said something very silly and Holden
Caulfield-y about how some people should stay behind the boards and
play the guitar tracks very skillfully, but they shouldn’t see success
in these endeavors as reason to stand behind the microphone. Brion, I
said, was like the pianist in Catcher in the Rye, dazzling and sparkly,
but thoroughly vapid.
And so it was with some trepidation that I went back to the Largo to watch
Brion play a set with Fiona Apple. I am 31, so Fiona Apple happened at
just the right time, right when I got a driver’s license and a Car
Discman, when my sprouting nihilism and adolescently dark worldview
needed its very own heroine. Preferably in panties and dark eyeliner.
Apple brutally filled this role. The sullen seventeen-year-olds of
America had no idea if she was going to be okay or how long she would
stay in our lives or really what was wrong, but Apple stood in as our
beautiful, Plathian fantasy. Unlike the neutered, absurd
#manicpixiedreamgirls who followed her, Fiona Apple was a fucking sex
bomb- it wasn’t just the "Criminal" video, it was the throaty, pained
voice and the ever-present threat that one day you would wake up, roll
over in bed to discover that Fiona Apple had up and left.
What would the marriage of Apple and Brion bring? In the studio, they had
produced When the Pawn and had started work together on Extraordinary
Machine, but would Brion’s obnoxious, self-indulgent stage antics
overwhelm the audience’s memory of our favorite sullen girl?
Only sorta. And not because Brion didn’t try- he certainly played his share of silly acoustic guitar licks and kept up the spontaneous, Hey, I
didn’t even plan anything cause I’m a genius! affect from his solo
show. But it didn’t really matter, because although Apple and Brion
spent at least half the set arguing over what song to play next,
flipping through notebooks, and eating yogurt, Apple still managed to
overpower the theatrics with a vocal performance that I will not soon
forget. The woman standing on the stage at the Largo bore almost no
resemblance to the Fiona Apple of my adolescence- she was much, much
thinner- nearly skeletal- she wore a vaguely Arabian green silk dress
and a massive orange wrap that had been lined with sparkles. More
importantly, the voice had changed- Apple’s voice on Tidal was deep and carried an air of contempt. The new Apple had less power, but as she sang through a series of very old covers- the sort of songs that are played on 45s in stores that only sell very expensive mid-century
modern furniture- her voice bent and cracked and warbled in perfect
synchronicity with the lyrics. (At one point, a fan requested new
material. "I can't remember [how to play] any of my new songs because they've been done for a fucking year," Apple replied. "Not her fault!"
said Brion.) By the third song, I was actively rooting against the
past. This new Fiona Apple was so much better, so much more nuanced and
thoughtful. At some point, she sang Cliff Edwards’ "Night Owl" with
that massive orange wrap tightly secured around her shoulders. When she
got to the chorus, "I’m a night owl," she widened her eyes and spread
out her arms, revealing the sparkly lining underneath, and flapped a
few times.
We pace our aging through our favorite pop stars- an
old favorite song heard on an oldies station lets us feel the passing
of time more urgently than any physical ailments. The process goes
forward in fits and spurts one day, I will read that Nas has turned 50
and I will look in the mirror and notice, for the first time, just how
gray I have gone. Most of the audience, I’m sure, had come to the Largo
to paste their memory of a nineteen-year-old Fiona Apple over the
older, frailer figure on stage. I certainly had. Last night, as I
watched Fiona Apple perform with such humor and artistic maturity, part
of my past very calmly, yet hurriedly, walked itself out the door.
What the fuck? I believe I can speak on behalf of myself and hundreds of thousands of fans that we want this music out now. I understand that Fiona Apple doesn't enjoy doing music commercially (or at least from what I understand,) but still- we want this music!! Do it for the fans, okay, Fiona?
Haha, I probably sound crazy, but I don't care.
P.S. Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy it as much as you can enjoy a holiday. ;) (Yes I'm aware, some holidays can really suck- hope yours doesn't.)
x-posted not verbatim (I mean the after article part) to Ohnotheydidnt.. hopefully it will actually show up there!
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