The Fat Angel Sings

“Rage can be a weapon of defense when it is calm.”

Fiona Apple was a classically-trained pianist from the age of eight, her father and mother, though never married and separated earlier on, were both professional performers. As a teenager, she finagled a three-song demo into the hands of producer Andrew Slater, who signed her almost immediately upon hearing her voice, began to manage her, and even produced Tidal. Her songs are vampy and confessional, heavy with mood, but there is nothing adolescent about the experiences recounted. Between Slater’s shepherding and the expertise of multi-instrumentalist Jon Brion on marimba, harp, vibraphone and more, Tidal pieced together teenage Fiona’s otherworldly song writing into the sleek ten-track album that defined her. Of course, it would also be the men who tied the tracks to an era; these songs would feel ancient if they weren’t occasionally soldered to the ‘90s. (Later on, when she was older, Fiona would mount a massive resistance to the overproduction on the early, leaked version of her 2005 album Extraordinary Machine.) Yet, a thing out of time is never as tender.

“Honestly, I’m not a very skilled pianist,” Apple admitted during a 1997 Keyboard magazine interview. “I can play my own stuff, obviously better than anyone else can, but as far as other music goes, I’m really not very good. It’s hard because…when we were making the album, Andy Slater was always saying, ‘No we have to take it back to what you wrote it on.  Back to the roots, that’s the only way it’s going to sound real.’ And the whole time I was saying ‘But I don’t want to play piano on this. I only wrote songs on the piano because it’s the only instrument I know. I don’t want this to be a fuckin’ piano album.’ But Andy kept saying, ‘No, this is how you sound. This is you.’”

In 1996 an interview in billboard that tells the story of Apple and Slater’s meeting and teases her debut, Tori Amos appears as the top of a box office grossing list, having just sold out Madison Square Garden. This was the world that welcomed Fiona with open arms, boosted her to sell three million copies of her debut, and turned her into a star, despite whatever reticence she may have had about celebrity. According to one strain of folklore surrounding the record, Fiona insisted that the name, “Tidal”, was taken in part because of its phonetic proximity to the funny emptiness of “Title.” But given the wild power of the thing that had come out her, she must have known this magnetism needed proper naming. What primeval force is more fitting than the tides to preside over such a magnificent airing out of wounds? Nothing is quite solid on Tidal anyway, and despite the ferocity, it is always a peaceful album, lapping like waves. The hypnotizing pull of these highs and lows make Tidal even easier to sink into; it is a record that swells and rages on an instinctual level. It remains one of the most important artistic distillations of female trauma because of the way she harnesses her pain, transforming it into a quiet source of power.

There’s little unrequited pining in Fiona’s version of the events, no matter how painful; “Shadowboxer” butterfly-floats above a stinging, out-and-out battle of wills, “Never Is A Promise” brooks no bitterness, though it’s disengagement is far from forgiving. Actually, most of the album occurs entirely in Fiona’s head; she is caught up in oblivion but remains focused on turning her hurt into something steadying and beautiful, still concerned with possibilities and potential outcomes. This is not indulgence, but a survival mechanism. On the album’s final two tracks, “Pale September” and “Carrion,” whose respective circumstances occupy very different ends of the emotional spectrum, she again commands and imagines the power she has over her partners. Poised even while candidly discussing most invasive and intimate events, her voice grows husky with rage on “Sullen Girl,” the track that confronts her assault head-on. She gives us the story, however cloaked the details may be, she gives us the full-throated vulnerability of coping, breaking, and mourning, in the process becoming one of the most self-aware female narrators of the ‘90s, or hell, in the entire history of rock.

Following the release of “Tidal”, Fiona Apple won the coveted VMA for Best New Artist, an award she wasn’t expecting. Instead of basking, she couldn’t help but continue to disrupt, urging her fans to ignore whatever picture perfect awards show narrative they’d just seen: “Go with yourself,” she commands, bug-eyed and nervous, entirely positive we don’t need her — or anyone else. Quietness won’t work here, so she screams into the night her infamous pronouncement — “This world is bullsh*t!” — pleading with us to believe her, a teenager in a fancy dress and long, loose curls, unconquered by a red carpet or some accolades. Her pain speaks a different language in public, but the grammar of empathy remains the same.It would be a relief if women did not have to create art out of pain so often, and if the work didn’t resonate so deeply whenever we are allowed to voice it freely.  “I’m strong like music,” Fiona sings at the end of “Slow Like Honey” a self-fulfilling prophecy for an audience of one that ended up resonating with millions. “I’m very thrilled that other people can get something out of my songs,”

Fiona Apple’s debut album “Tidal”, originally released July 23rd, 1996.