The Idler Wheel Is Wiser than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More than Ropes Will Ever Do (Expanded Edition)

After another long wait between albums (seven years since the richly ornate Extraordinary Machine), Fiona Apple re-emerged in her rawest, most uninhibited state. On 2012’s The Idler Wheel…, it’s her passion for living—for feeling everything, as she proclaims on opening track “Every Single Night”—that is her most potent weapon. “Every single night’s a fight with my brain,” she bellows, and with that confession we know we’re in for a wild ride.
Unlike past albums, The Idler Wheel... is stripped of any colorful art-pop frills. Instead, Apple guides us straight off the rails via the sheer recklessness of her voice. One minute she’s rooting for her ex-lover with the dark humor of “Valentine,” the next she’s tearing him down on the turbulent kiss-off “Regret.” Still, she takes most of the beating, shredding her vocal cords to get her point across, even if she’s incriminating herself, like on the fast-moving, quick-witted “Left Alone.”
Throughout, the piano remains her most loyal accomplice, while drummer Charley Drayton’s jazzy, unorthodox rhythms and Apple’s own thigh slaps, scissor scrapes, and stray field recordings hopscotch around her sharp turns of phrase with youthful abandon. The less structured and refined, the more liberated she is—so much so she sounds downright buoyant on the slyly flirtatious “Anything We Want” and the multi-layered (mostly) a capella stunner “Hot Knife.” Time may never tame Apple’s temper, but it has at least given her the freedom to do anything and feel everything.