Reviews > CDs

Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel…

Clean Slate/Epic

Fiona Apple’s less than-prolific output generates a good deal of attention, but this one is worth the wait. Call it the seven-year itch; now 34, Apple’s range as a singer seems to have caught up with the daunting emotional depth of her music, to the point where she can grab a quiet song like “Daredevil” by the throat and belt out a self-implicating line (“Seek me out/ Look at, look at, look at, Look at me…”) with the soulful, even worldweary, rage of someone possessed. This is the other part of what pushes her last album, 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, so far into the rearview: that was also a band project, while The Idler Wheel… —co-produced with veteran rocker Charley Drayton—focuses on Apple and her piano, with lean percussion loops and occasional acoustic bass as her only accompaniment. The stripped-down ambience gives her room to dip and dive over some superb melodies, whether she’s near-whispering the nursery rhyme-ish “Every Single Night” or demolishing an old boyfriend in “Regret.” On “Werewolf,” she even taps into Brill Building-era Carole King and Laura Nyro, trailing out with a bouncy refrain of “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key.” Nothing wrong, indeed.