Fetch the Bolt Cutters is Fiona Apple’s fifth studio album and her first in eight years since 2012’s The Idler Wheel. It’s the sound of a woman freeing herself from the constraints of form, expectation, and establishment — burning everything down to make a profoundly singular work unlike anything that’s ever existed.
Apple, who’s been known not to leave the Venice Beach home where she’s been living since 2000 with any frequency, created Fetch the Bolt Cutters sound out of found resources and the trappings of her home environment. The album features Fiona stomping on the ground, the meow of a supermodel, up to five different dogs barking, banging on the walls, chants, claps, bells, and a stove top Apple found in an alley. The mistakes remain. On the album’s closer ‘On I Go’, after a presumed flub, she smiles audibly, “Ah, fuck, shit, oh!” and keeps moving, consistent with the song, and perhaps the album’s mantra: “On I go, not toward or away / Up until now it was day, next day / Up until now in a rush to prove / But now I only move to move.”
Even Pitchfork gave it a rare 10/10, saying “Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a wild symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music had ever sounded quite like it”. How do you like them apples…
