Fiona Apple "When the Pawn ..." Epic

"When the Pawn ..." doesn't sidestep the traps that typically snare an artist into a sophomore slump. Apple spends a lot of time sifting the hate mail her precociously damaged 1997 debut, "Tidal," generated. "So keep callin' me names, keep on, keep on/I'll keep kickin' the crap till it's gone," she sings in a song titled "The Way Things Are," lest we miss her drift.

"To Your Love" opens with the line "Here's another speech you wish I'd swallow," and the rest of the song suggests that she's actually got something really personal and painful to get off her chest, preferably in private. But it's hard not to think about Apple's most infamous foray into public speaking, that ludicrous moment at the 1997 Video Music Awards when she evidently went, "Wait a minute, I'm beginning to think some of the images on MTV might not be entirely realistic," and stepped to the podium to rail against the tyranny of media-legislated coolness, like a junior Nina Simone defecatin' on your microphone (or, as Chris Rock giggled right after the fact, like "Fiona X").

Most of the songs are less self-referential; think of this record as Afghan Whigs' I've-been-a-bad-bad-boyfriend concept album "Gentlemen" translated into fatalist Plath-rock. But the music crackles with the sense of humor that comes from unashamedly embracing your own fuck-ups, acquiring a taste (as Fiona X puts it) for well-made mistakes. There's more to admire on "When the Pawn ..." than mere displays of guts, but if nothing else, it's the best non-apology since Madonna's "Human Nature." Smart move -- being 22, urban and probably over- or under-therapized means never having to say you're sorry, and I'll take the more-than-occasional lines of embarrassing verse ("My derring-do allows me to dance the rigadoon around you" -- blecchh) as an occupational hazard on a record that kisses so little ass.

If Apple has an MTV doppelgänger, it's Kaia, the hyper-analytical, world-weary poetry-journal scribbler who flounced through this season's Hawaii "Real World" like Dorothy Parker forced to host "Total Request Live." The difference is that the Apple of "When the Pawn ..." keeps doing what you always wanted that loopy mixed-up Kaia to do, identifying the enablers and energy suckers in her life and chopping them too short to shit. Apple doesn't want their pity any more than she wants ours. She's full of shivery lines like "You wanna lick my wounds, you want the badge of honor when you save my hide ... You fondle my trigger then you blame my gun" (from "Limp," which eventually leaves some guy "lying limp in [his] own hand") and "I know I'm a mess he don't wanna clean up" (from "Paper Bag").

Speaking of MTV, ex-boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson's video clip for the single "Fast as You Can" makes these intimidation tactics visual. While the drummer keeps a junglish pace with the stream of her consciousness, a fast-forwarded Apple puts out matches on her tongue like a cross between Sherilyn Fenn and G. Gordon Liddy, or the world's scariest video-dating-service applicant.

We're pulled toward the extraordinary closer, "I Know" (which could be subtitled "... Too Much"). As the Nino Rota homages, bat-winged sax licks, DJ-bait drum solos, clanking poltergeist activity and guitar-as-turntable-scratch breaks of Jon Brion's shrewd production recede, Apple wraps her Jennifer Jason Leigh bruise of a voice around a wry and unsentimental after-hours lament. She tells her man she'll be waiting "by the backstage door" while he decides whether to come, stay, lay or pray (and don't think it's a coincidence that now it's the guy who's onstage; Apple's finished growing up in public).

Lines in the last song, like "You can use my skin, to bury secrets in" and "Baby, I can't help you out while she's still around" indicate progress: A girl who once worried about being careless with a delicate man is starting to grow into a woman who won't get fooled again. The string arrangement's so pretty that Rufus Wainwright would sucker-punch Ray Charles for it, but the way the words dance around volatile relationship upheaval is pure Apple, and suddenly it's no great mystery why all these songs sound like waltzes -- can you think of a better way for a fighter to practice her footwork?
salon.com | Nov. 24, 1999

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - -