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Music Why Fiona Apple’s “Fetch The Bolt Cutters” feels even more relevant now

Feb. 5, 2021
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CW: sexual assault.

A year marked by a pandemic, civil unrest, and shifts both universal and personal, 2020 was a universally challenging time. It felt natural to occasionally escape the unsettling realities of society with a film or record. But during a moment of ubiquitous uncertainty, such mediums hold a felicitous quality to them: music sometimes sounds more apocalyptic or on-the-nose with the times, movies mirror life as we know it, and the words we read in books begin to make a little more sense than they did before. 

The past year couldn’t have been a more appropriate moment for Fiona Apple to offer her wisdom and music. On April 17th, her long-awaited fifth album Fetch The Bolt Cutters filled the ears of hungry listeners. The album opens with Apple singing, “I’ve waited many years,” likely a direct reference to the eight-year gap between this and her previous album The Idler Wheel… In the thick of lockdown, when indoor life felt like years were slipping away, the album was a breath of fresh air. Now barely a few weeks into the new year, not much feels different. We’re still in the throes of a pandemic and witnessing political and social disruption. On New Year’s Day, after having coffee with a friend, I walked around my rainy neighborhood and listened to Apple’s song “Heavy Balloon.” Standing near a streetlight, it dawned on me that this all still felt pertinent, that Fetch The Bolt Cutters is still just as invigorating as it was in 2020, and it so clearly remains the perfect companion to this pending year.  

While home from school for winter break, I’ve listened to the album in full at least twice. With each listen, I hear every track a little differently than before. I don’t think I’ve completely unlocked Fetch The Bolt Cutters as a whole or come to understand exactly what Apple is saying, but it’s beginning to make a bit more sense to me now.  

As soon as “Under The Table'' came on, I heard an insistence I had missed the first time. Even in the opening line—“I would beg to disagree but begging disagrees with me”—Apple expresses how important her opinion is, both to her partner in the song and the listener. People may not see the importance in her opinion, but she reminds listeners that she won’t shut up despite efforts to silence her. In fact, the idea of confronting tormentors is present in both Fetch The Bolt Cutters and the world now. Amidst protests and fights for basic human rights, people constantly need to be reminded to use their voices to evoke change and to give a platform to, as Apple says, the ones who are kicked under the table. While specifically speaking to her relationship, Apple is really just pleading, let us all be heard, because either way, we’ll speak out the truth.

During my first listen last April, “Heavy Balloon” was the first track that immediately resonated with me. The metaphor of the title in the opening line was so loaded: “People like us, we play with a heavy balloon, we keep it up to keep the devil at bay but it always falls way too soon.” For the first time in a song, I was hearing someone directly acknowledge how strenuous it is to put up a front. We’re often reminded of axioms along the lines of “it’s okay to not be okay,” but Apple gives this adage life. When she sings, “The bottom begins to feel like the only safe place that you know,” she brings up how our mental health can eat away at us. After surviving 2020, so many of us have become familiar with some version of “the bottom”: a place of profound darkness, feeling trapped in our homes, and simply living through COVID-19. I certainly know it—not leaving my house for almost two months left me feeling imprisoned, even though I knew it was the safest course of action. While I leave my house more often now, so many of these unknowns still exist. As we continue to live through a pandemic while still confronting our own issues on a daily basis, Apple’s record ensures us that it’s normal to not feel entirely okay. 

Fetch The Bolt Cutters can also be read as a feminist manifesto. “Ladies, ladies, ladies, ladies, take it easy, when he leaves me please be my guest,” Apple sings in the second verse of “Ladies.” In a world where women are pitted against each other constantly, Apple suggests that women shouldn’t feel bitterness and envy toward one another under any circumstances—the specific circumstance in the song being sharing a man in common. “Ladies” in particular has always felt important to me, partially because it’s the theme song for me and my friends at school. Beyond the song giving me great nostalgia for nights marked by glasses of red wine and dancing until ungodly hours, I realize that what Apple is saying truly embodies what we stand for as female friends: we’re women who listen to one another and value each other for all our experiences, assets, and flaws. 

The theme of battling oppressors, specifically men, continues: the second-to-last track, “For Her,” was written during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings in 2018 and is one of the most personal songs on the record. When she was 12, Apple was raped outside her Morningside Heights apartment in New York. Although she has never specifically written about her trauma, the female experience and endurance are everlasting topics for her. Unlike songs from past records, the singer is frank and to the point in “For Her,” explicitly stating, “You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” Upon first listen, it’s a shock to the system. Apple herself explained in an interview with Vulture, “Even though it’s an awkward thing to say in a song—“You raped me”—some people need to say it out loud in order to understand that’s what happened to them. And my hope is that maybe some women and men will be able to sing along with that line and allow it to tell the truth for them.”  

That alone is truly what Fetch The Bolt Cutters embodies: it’s honest, surprising, and unwilling to exist within the confines of storytelling. In the wake of 2020, “For Her” feels especially momentous. Last February, right before lockdown began, the disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein was found guilty of sexual assault and rape, and sentenced to 23 years in prison after over 80 women came forward with stories recalling Weinstein’s abuse. Although Apple wrote “For Her” before Weinstein went to jail, there are parallels between her experience and what these women did: they all came forward and spoke the truth without sugarcoating.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters marks a new chapter in Apple’s life and career. During a time full of unpredictability, Apple is fearless. Critics at Vulture have called Fetch The Bolt Cutters an instant classic, and it makes sense: it’s a once-in-a-lifetime record. In the words of music critic Jen Pelley of Pitchfork, who gave the album a rare 10 out of 10, “No music has ever sounded quite like it.” Although Fetch The Bolt Cutters doesn’t hit every issue or necessarily connect with every single listener, it will likely always sound new. Beyond that, it already feels like the kind of record that will touch listeners in an everlasting way, perhaps growing more relevant with every year.