I love the many ways in which “Hot Knife” – An appalling earworm, and one I should probably apologize for right now – sounds like it’s come from outside of time to bring you messages that don’t necessarily make sense just yet: The kettledrum, sounding like some old 1940s movie serial with a jungle theme, the piano that comes in and seems intentionally out of synch with the rest of the song, the multi-tracked vocals for the second verse, or the lyrical choices (“He excites me/Must be like the genesis of rhythm/I get feisty/Whenever I’m with him”). Everything feels like an element that’s exciting and interesting and a throwback to a different time period from everything else in the song, and that it should go together properly, but somehow, it does. This is a song in 4D, working at angles that we don’t even really comprehend. One of the standout tracks on Fiona Apple’s The Idler Wheel, which was already an album that was breathtaking in all the right ways.
Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan