Fiona Apple

Pop Matters Best 2012 on Fiona Apple

#3 Fiona Apple has seemingly become the “Terrence Malick of Pop”. She takes bloody ages to do anything and when it arrives you’re often initially baffled. Cryptic curios written in tongues and riddled with riddles. Beautiful, poetic but spiked with sadness and so meticulously engraved you know every teeny detail is carved for a reason...full article here

Pretty Much Amazing Best 2012 on Fiona Apple

#1 “I just want to feel everything,” Fiona Apple sings at the start of her magnificent fourth album The Idler Wheel. Feeling is hardly in short supply here: The Idler Wheel crackles with what could be every known emotion...full article here

AllMusic Best 2012 on Fiona Apple

#3 Returning after a seven year break -- her longest time between albums -- Fiona Apple delivered another idiosyncratic dazzler with The Idler Wheel. full article here

SPIN on Fiona Apple

#16 On her fourth album, Fiona Apple once again unbends the twist-tied thoughts inside her head, creating gorgeous song-poems that echo lonely, late-night anxieties maybe a little too accurately ("How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?")...full article here

Spinner Best of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#1 After years of flying under the radar following the troubled release of 2005's Extraordinary Machine, it's as if Fiona needed to make a statement with her fourth album...full article here

Sputnikmusic on Fiona Apple

#18 Much like Jenny Hval did with last year’s Viscera, Fiona Apple accomplishes with her wonderful fourth outing. Sure, both exist as contemplative female fronted indie, but it’s all much deeper than that–both efforts are stunningly intimate in their approach. The Idler Wheel… feels like Apple’s most intensely personal album to date; a stripped down affair that features the artist at her most bare...full article here

Stereogum Best of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#1 The Idler Wheel… (Epic)

Tiny Mix Tapes Best of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#44 Describing music as “emotional” is among the laziest and most short-sighted critical tools. Although you can typically suss out which emotions are being lauded, it suggests that certain emotions are more genuine, more real than others...full article here

American Songwriter's Top 50 Albums Of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#17 Fiona Apple doesn’t hold anything back. Surely any singer-songwriter can draw deep into personal traumas and insecurities for their art, but Apple has a special knack for making an audience of thousands feel like a confidant. But for the level of oversharing that occurs on The Idler Wheel — almost all of which come attached to a romance gone awry — each confession is dressed up in elegant and immaculately arranged melody. Apple’s songs feel at once more intimate and gorgeously complex than before (which is saying a lot given her history of collaborating with producer extraordinaire Jon Brion). She can build from a barely-there melody as she does on “Every Single Night,” or embrace manic maximalism on a blunt, head-spinning standout like “Left Alone.”...full article here

Treble Best of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#5 There was a severe absence of brutal, uncomfortable, way-too-intimate honesty in the music world during Fiona Apple’s seven-year hiatus from the limelight...full article here

Los Angeles Times: Pop & Hiss on Fiona Apple

#3 Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel... Los Angeles Times - 2012 Albums Of The Year

SPIN Magazine's Best Albums Of 2012 on Fiona Apple

#16 On her fourth album, Fiona Apple once again unbends the twist-tied thoughts inside her head, creating gorgeous song-poems that echo lonely, late-night anxieties maybe a little too accurately ("How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?"). This time out, the key feeling connecting these songs, from the arrhythmically anguished "Left Alone" to the dreamlike "Anything We Want," is dryness: The bare minimum of instruments thrash and parry behind Apple as she pushes ... more here

NME Recommended Albums on Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple - 'The Idler Wheel...' scored 8 / 10 Over three startling albums (1996’s ‘Tidal’, 1999’s ‘When The Pawn…’ and 2005’s ‘Extraordinary Machine’), Fiona Apple’s sophisticated neuroses became emblematic of a very American end-of-the-century angst. Teaming a confessional sensibility with a dramatic edge, the New Yorker’s seemingly endless well of demons to be exorcised transcended the usual ’90s singer/songwriter clichés thanks to jaw-dropping levels of lyrical and musical prowess. Whether she was sharing details about a masochistic power struggle (‘Not About Love’, ‘Shadowboxer’), contemplating the abuse she suffered as a child (‘Sullen Girl’) or seemingly reflecting on her role as enfant terrible of the Lilith Fair set (‘Limp’), Apple’s songs had the dangerous, addictive quality of watching a car crash in slow motion. Now, after seven years, she’s finally back...more at nme.com

Pitchfork Best New Tracks on Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple: "Werewolf"

Dan Monick So faint you think you've imagined them, some kids' playground screams drift into the mix two-thirds of the way through Fiona Apple 's "Werewolf" . They sound sepia-toned, like they've floated in from memory's open window; their manic, unruly energy clashes with the song's sparse arrangement, which is all plinking keys and gently brushed drums. What are they screaming about? What are kids ever screaming about? The sample has that quality, that youthful drama, that makes the shouts sound both playful and chilling, and it feels equally plausible that they are either playing the most awesome game ever invented or that there's a cannibal loose among them. You grow up and that drama never quite quiets down, but "Werewolf" is a song about one of the....[from The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do ; out 06/19/12 via Epic ]

Amoeba Music on Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser... (CD) She’s back and verbose as ever, with an album title longer than most indie rock songs entire lyrics. Perhaps in part due to her prolonged but ultimately triumphant effort to release her last album, Extraordinary Machine, Apple sounds uninterested in storming the radio with The Idler Wheel. She’s after something bigger here, and she largely achieves it on what might be her best album yet. Lyrically, she exposes her greatest wounds and digs at them with extraordinary candor and self-directed venom. “I root for you, I love you, you you you you” she sings on one of her lovelier tunes, “Valentine,” but...more at amoeba.com

Buzz Bands LA on Fiona Apple

Your Sunday fun: ► Fiona Apple headlines the Hollywood Palladium behind the release of her first album in seven years, "The Idler Wheel ...," and L.A.'s own Blake Mills (besides playing in her band) opens. ► Crystal Stilts hit town for a night at Part Time Punks at the Echo, supported by the Mantles and Sea Lions. ► The Memorials — the ferocious rock ’n’ soul outfit helmed by drummer Thomas Pridgen — headline the Troubadour on a night that also features Bethpage Black, Cityzen, Sixstep more here

Pitchfork Best Albums on Fiona Apple

Album "The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do" scored 9.0

Idler Wheel is Fiona Apple's first album in seven years, and her sharp songwriting and vivid lyrical imagery have lost none of their power. The record's intense emotional world is highlighted by the ...