On April 17, 2020, Fiona Apple released Fetch the Bolt Cutters, her first album since The Idler Wheel… in 2012. This was a return to form for Apple; her emotionally raw vocals and often distressingly vulnerable songwriting earned adoration from fans but ridicule in the press. Even decades removed from her unstable rocket to fame as a teenager, the weight of public perception hadn’t lessened.
Throughout the recording process, which was unpredictable and had no set schedule, Fiona Apple experienced moments of creative clarity. But often, these would shift into self-doubt and anxiety just as quickly as they appeared.
Fiona Apple’s ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ Emerged like a Sculpture: Slow, Messy, and Magical
As the days inched closer to the album’s release, Apple worried about touring and how the album would be perceived. Old nightmares returning, spinning anxious loops in her mind.
But the album itself was a masterpiece. Fiona Apple may have a narrow discography, but her work has depth. With the way she exhumes her vulnerable memories, writing about emotional and physical trauma, neuroses, and habitual behaviors, it’s no wonder she needs to take years between albums.
In a March 2020 feature in The New Yorker, Apple pondered this exact notion. The idea that her body is an instrument for her art, like sculptors or ballerinas. With each album, she wears herself out and must take time to recover between projects.
The early stages of ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ started with Apple recording alone at home
But she doesn’t stop completely, even in the healing time. For example, the first glimmer of Fetch the Bolt Cutters appeared as early as 2012. The difference here was that Apple recorded it at home, mostly by herself or with her band, and she had complete creative control of every aspect.
The years have seen Fiona Apple retreat from the public eye to a secluded but creative house in Venice Beach. Around 2020, she rarely left her house except to walk her dog on the beach, and most likely not much has changed in six years. But Apple still had a close-knit selection of people in her life: her sister and half-brother, her band, an ex-boyfriend who hung around, a roommate, and their two dogs.
Around 2015, Apple brought her band together. Long-time bassist Sebastian Steinberg described the group as “an organism instead of an assemblage—something natural,” to The New Yorker. Other members included drummer Aimee Allen Wood and guitarist Davíd Garza.
Percussion was a big part of Fetch the Bolt Cutters. Apple devised DIY instruments out of oil cans filled with gravel and dirt, seed pods she baked in her oven, and containers wrapped in rubber bands. She even used her dog Janet’s bones as a makeshift glockenspiel, tapping a brief rhythm from where Janet lived in an ornate box in Apple’s living room.
Fiona Apple’s guitarist, Davíd Garza, likened her recording process to making a sculpture
“It felt more like a sculpture being built than an album being made,” Garza said of the process at the time. Steinberg recalled, “We played the way kids play or the way birds sing.” The album became heavy with percussion, marching beats, the band banging on the walls and floors of Apple’s house. It was innovation with no real plan, just pure creation.
“It’s very raw and unslick,” said Steinberg. He added that, for Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple’s “agenda has gotten wilder and a lot less concerned with what the outside world thinks—she’s not seventeen, she’s forty, and she’s got no reason not to do exactly what she wants.”
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