Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do is one of those holy-shit-albums that comes around once in an artist's career. It's beautiful, raw, brutally honest, minimalist. Her voice has such a presence. It cracks in all the right places. It's from the gut and that's where it hits me.
I could liken you to a werewolf the way you left me for dead
but I admit that I provided a full moon
and I could liken you to a shark the way you bit off my head
but then again I was waving around a bleeding open wound
Fiona was my favorite musical artist in 1997, which was a long long time ago. Tidal is a great debut album and I stand by it still. It's a good coming-of-age album -- an album you easily love as a thirteen-year-old girl -- and once in awhile in your adult life you might revive it, not out of some dumb nostalgic desire to relive a sliver of your youth but because it's actually good.
Her subsequent albums are pretty good, too. They have their moments. But not like this. My mind is blown.