official Fiona Apple thread

Started by neatahwanta, November 29, 2003, 05:24:09 PM

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Ghostboy

Fiona covering Sally's Song from Nightmare Before Christmas:

MacGuffin



Fiona Apple returns to intimacy
The princess of raw-nerve confessional pop flourishes in a small setting for two fund-raising concerts.
By Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times

"I've never done this kind of thing before in my life," Fiona Apple said Monday, introducing a song during her show at the Largo.

That's exactly the kind of thing the audience at the matchbox-size club was hoping for, a moment to memorably differentiate this benefit performance from a business-as-usual Fiona Apple concert.

The intimacy of the room and the mix of originals and standards in the set had already made it distinctive enough, but it turned out that what she had never done before was a call-and-response audience-participation number.

So there she was, the princess of sophisticated, raw-nerve confessional pop, belting out the theme from the kids' TV show "Gumby" and having the audience shout back "Gungi."

"Gungi" is the nickname of her production manager Gordon Paterson, whose battle with cancer prompted Apple to schedule two fundraising shows (the second one, also sold out, is Friday) at the Fairfax district club that's been a regular haunt of hers.

If her Gumby moment was a playful and slightly ridiculous diversion, the 90-minute set overall was weighted toward the sublime. And though its main aim was to help Paterson financially, the evening also made a statement about Apple's artistry.

Her shows in recent years have reached for such a large scale, culminating in last year's tour of arenas opening for Coldplay, that her distinguishing subtleties have tended to be obscured. Monday's performance was a radical reassertion of the nuanced writing and singing that give her music such chilling intimacy.

In the small, nearly silent room, Apple sometimes offered a lyric so softly that her listeners leaned forward like friends hanging on a revelation that would explain everything.

Even in these rarified moments, her voice always held its shape and phrased with percussive precision. Every time she concluded the intricate refrain of "Extraordinary Machine" — "I make the most of it / I'm an extraordinary machine" — it sounded like a string of fine, tiny porcelain beads.

Apple, who was accompanied for all but a couple of songs by longtime collaborator and Largo ringmaster Jon Brion on acoustic guitar, was a strikingly physical performer, reacting to moods and tempos with a body that flailed, stalked, swayed and twitched. Her vocals also ranged far from those understated passages, growling in primal scream mode on "To Your Love" and adopting a torch singer's croon on "Shadowboxer."

These and a few other originals shared the set with some vintage pop standards whose harmonic complexity and lyrical smarts have clearly inspired her own pop-cabaret style. Honoring their nature but bending them to her will, Apple and Brion made Duke Ellington's "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" a ragtimey romp and gave Frank Loesser's "On a Slow Boat to China" a gentle sway. "Crazy" (Willie Nelson's, not Gnarls Barkley's, though that might have been something to try), Irving Berlin's "All Alone" and "Blue Skies" and others helped fill out a panorama of pop history.

Apple might have looked a bit severe in her black, Japanese-style flower-print dress and with her hair tied back tightly, but the atmosphere grew increasingly loose as she and Brion were joined for much of the set by Heartbreakers pianist Benmont Tench and for a stretch by Sean and Sara Watkins of the bluegrass band Nickel Creek.

They all pitched in to the set's big release point, a roof-raising, hot-jazz take on Ella Fitzgerald's "When I Get Low I Get High," with Brion and Tench sharing the one piano. And the Watkins siblings helped Apple tap a strain of rootsy Americana: Singing high harmony on the 19th century murder ballad "Banks of the Ohio" is probably something she doesn't do very often either.
"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art." - Andy Warhol


Skeleton FilmWorks

tpfkabi

what's the history with her and Nickel Creek. they also show up on the EM dualdisc during her Largo songs with JB.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

tpfkabi

broke this out for the first time in a while and this lyric stood out:

"Conversation once colored by esteem
Became dialogue as a diagram of a play for blood"
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ono

JB's comment here made me want to watch the again.  A comment there made me think, hey, waitaminute, is Fiona really working on a new album?  Billboard said it should've come out already, but you know how that goes.

Oh yeah, and listen to "So Sleepy", a collaboration with Jon Brion and the Punch Brothers, from Chickens in Love, for some sort of non-profit.

Stefen

PTA and Fiona are two of the laziest people I can think of. They hardly ever get any work done. When they were hooking up, I bet things just piled up. No house chores, grocery shopping, etc. I bet their TV always stayed on the same channel.

Laziest two people ever. If they picked their nose and couldn't find a tissue immediately nearby they would probably just put the booger back in their nostril.  :yabbse-cry:

Ever notice how Fiona's albums only have like 10 songs?
Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

cronopio 2

Quote from: S.R. on June 16, 2011, 05:08:28 PM
PTA and Fiona are two of the laziest people I can think of. They hardly ever get any work done. When they were hooking up, I bet things just piled up. No house chores, grocery shopping, etc. I bet their TV always stayed on the same channel.

Laziest two people ever. If they picked their nose and couldn't find a tissue immediately nearby they would probably just put the booger back in their nostril.  :yabbse-cry:

Ever notice how Fiona's albums only have like 10 songs?

quoted for posterity.

Stefen

Falling in love is the greatest joy in life. Followed closely by sneaking into a gated community late at night and firing a gun into the air.

cronopio 2


tpfkabi

I agree. When a professional musician cannot come up with or release at least 10 songs or 40 mins of music in 6 years time something is going on. And her last release was even old and when through that 2 version debacle.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

You guys act like a musician is supposed to be strictly a musician prolific in nature.  So what if she hasn't come out with anything new?  Her work was still great till Extraordinary Machine.  In fact, the leak was pretty good, but it was the fucking fans who petitioned and demanded an album, so they did something *new* so people would buy it, since the leak was spread amongst her fans, and it hardly held up to Brion's mix.

Now you expect  her to just manifest new songs?  Just let it flow naturally, there isn't even room to speculate that she's working on something.  She's just living her life, Tidal and When The Pawn, with a handful of extra non-album tracks, are plenty to be satiated on. 
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye

Reel

"if you don't have song to sing, you're OK. You know how to get along humming. Hmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm."

she just come out with a whole album of humming.


tpfkabi

If musicians don't make music, or filmmakers make film, we will only have the past to look upon.
I, for one, think Ms. Apple is quite talented and wish her to leave as much art to this world as possible.
Saying this, I know it is ultimately her choice as to what she releases, if anything at all.
Life is short. You could be one of the greatest film directors of all time and die shortly after you edit your (unbeknownst to you) last film.

That being said, Six (6) years for a full-time musician to release only a song here and there for compilations, etc. is pretty scarce.
Six years is a really long time for most directors and making a movie takes a lot more wheels and cogs moving than your typical music album.
I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.

ᾦɐļᵲʊʂ

But she doesn't owe anyone anything.  She's an artist, she's been able to be successful and release what she's comfortable with, would you prefer her experience gluts or bad albums just because she needed to keep churning out music, regardless of how connected she felt to it or not?

What she has out is pretty good, though Extraordinary Machine is fairly lackluster.  Do you think that, given that album, if she were to go into prolific mode, that she would just get better and better?  Not every artist approaches their talent with the same mindset.  Some say what they need to say with a couple defining albums, especially since the tracks on her albums are quite short.  She must really make what she is satisfied with and turns it over.  It's not as though she's obligated to keep providing us with more and more until she croaks.

It's a kind thought to suggest you want her to leave as much of her art to the world as possible, but not everyone expresses themselves in that way, and considering how personal and sensitive her music is, what would be the benefit of pushing her to make more and more?
"As a matter of fact I only work with the feeling of something magical, something seemingly significant. And to keep it magical I don't want to know the story involved, I just want the hypnotic effect of it somehow seeming significant without knowing why." - Len Lye