There’s something consistently alluring about the way in which Fiona Apple’s vocals throw themselves around in a similar way to her lyrics. Listen to the swoop and the dive of her here, as she condemns a former lover and takes responsibility for her own culpability all at once (“I could liken you to a werewolf/The way you left me for dead/But I admit/That I provided a full moon”), or the sweep of her voice as she reaches “One thing leads to another…” and the note changes, weirdly comfortably as the piano drives beneath her. In many ways, this feels like the archetypal Apple song, smart, blunt, complex and just a little scattered. It’s honest, and yet disguised enough to keep the innocent unnamed. If only more confessional artists had such skill.
Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan