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- - - - - - - - - - - - Nov. 24, 1999 |
Predictably, Apple's record has already drawn cheap shots and low blows for all the Guinness Book-ready verbiage on its cover, but -- here goes -- "When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and if You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right" is Apple as a "Shadowboxer" turned heavyweight, the pugilist at her best. Don't call it a comeback.
Fiona Apple
"When the Pawn ..."
"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- 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- 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- 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?
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