Fiona Apple The Idler Wheel... 180g LP

Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time - Rated 213/500!

Fiona Apple's fourth studio album, originally released in 2012, features "Werewolf," "Hot Knife," and opening track "Every Single Night."

Fiona Apple was catapulted into the public consciousness with the release of her debut album, Tidal, in 1996 at the crest of the alternative rock wave. She was an MTV favorite and captivated audiences both at her own shows as well as on Sarah McLachlan's Lilith Fair revue. Her 1999 follow up, When The Pawn…, cemented her appeal having a focused blend of emotional songs with unconventional arrangements. Her output become more sporadic with Extraordinary Machine coming six years later and then The Idler Wheel… another seven years after that. Her reputation as a daring and serious artist has never been in question.

Lacking either ornate production or a pop single, The Idler Wheel plays like Fiona Apple at her purest and that's plenty complicated: she takes no shortcuts or easy turns, her intent somewhat shrouded but never absent. Much of the charm of Apple's music isn't decoding what it all means but learning its internal clockwork, letting the songs take root, so the love songs seem sweeter, the braggadocio funnier, the pathos and paranoia feeling fathomless. Once the startling Spartan surfaces of The Idler Wheel become familiar, similarities to her three previous albums are apparent but what's new is an unwavering determination and cohesion. Nothing is wasted, either in the composition or arrangement, and this lean confidence binds The Idler Wheel. Stripped of all her carnivalesque accouterments, Fiona Apple remains as rich and compelling as she ever was, perhaps even more so.

The Idler Wheel continued Fiona Apple's run as one of modern pop's most thrilling eccentrics. There's a single-minded intensity to songs like 'Every Single Night' and 'Hot Knife,' where she puts an almost shocking amount of feeling into each syllable. Apple can sound like a cabaret singer in one song and a blueswoman in the next, her voice full of sandpaper edges and bestial roars. 'I may need a chaperone,' she wonders on 'Daredevil,' but this album proves she's at her very best when left to her own devices.