Fetch the Bolt Cutters
| Fiona Apple
Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the fifth studio album by American singer-songwriter Fiona Apple. It was released on April 17, 2020, Apple's first release since The Idler Wheel... in 2012. The album was recorded from 2015 to 2020, largely at Apple's home in Venice Beach. It was produced and performed by Apple alongside Amy Aileen Wood, Sebastian Steinberg and Davíd Garza; recording consisted of long, often-improvised takes with unconventional percussive sounds. GarageBand was used for much of this recording, and Apple credited the album's unedited vocals and long takes to her lack of expertise with the program. -Wikipedia
Critic Reviews
Show All-
Pitchfork
Fiona Apple’s fifth record is unbound, a wild symphony of the everyday, an unyielding masterpiece. No music has ever sounded quite like it.
-
The Guardian
The unhurried artist’s first studio album in eight years is astonishing, intimate and demonstrates a refusal to be silenced.
-
Rolling Stone
Her first LP since 2012’s ‘The Idler Wheel…’ is the best work of her career.
-
Vulture
Manic descants, discordant pianos and abrupt changes in time signature at once complement and compete with each other in a carefully crafted clatter. The melodies are wonderful. The lyrics, too — conversational yet precise.” —Alexandra Pollard
-
Consequence of Sound
Yet, for those willing to give it the attention it deserves, Bolt Cutters delivers a much-needed auditory exercise for the sequestered masses and surely one of the best albums to grace us in 2020. Eight long years later, Fiona Apple proves her return was worth every second in waiting.
-
AV Club
this album is Apple sounding assured with where she’s at in life and wishing the same for anyone holding similarly toxic cards.
-
Variety
“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” sounds as fresh as something that crossed Apple’s fertile mind 10 minutes ago. It may be way early to say it’s the most satisfying album of the year, but if there are any more to come along this good, 2020 is not going to feel like such a waste of time after all.
-
Paste Magazine
The singer’s brilliant fifth album is eerily clairvoyant and brash in the most extraordinary way.
-
Sputnik Music
One of those pieces of art that words cant quite do justice, Fiona Apple has crafted an instant classic.
-
Los Angeles Times
The result of Apple’s self-imposed social distancing is the stunning intimacy of the material here — a rich text to scour in quarantine.
-
US magazine
Many listeners will sample this album while straining against the confines and redundancy of quarantine, and Fetch the Bolt Cutters provides an emotional and exciting escape, channeling rage, grief, humor, frustration and hope.
-
Stereogum
Fetch The Bolt Cutters is a wild, frenzied, ecstatic gift of an album. We’re lucky to have it. Blast the music.
-
NME
On her first record in eight years, the New Yorker teams excoriating lyrics with deliberately unrefined sounds. It's a visceral experience.
-
Entertainment
Bolt Cutters feels both playful and urgent, melodic and chaotic.
-
The Line of Best Fit
Albums like this feel important because they unflinchingly capture the smorgasbord of life. Assault, sisters, love, evil, neediness, isolation and absolute freedom exist all at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence.
-
USA Today
These are the kinds of razor-sharp statements and evocative lyrics that reveal themselves in every new listen of "Fetch the Bolt Cutters," a dense and richly poetic masterpiece from one of music's best modern storytellers.
-
MSN
a strange, exceptional record.
-
Independent
A witty, wonderful album laced with defiance.
-
Time
Fetch the Bolt Cutters Is Raw, Introspective and Everything We Need Out of a Fiona Apple Album.
-
Slant Magazine
Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters Is a Prismatic Pop Experiment.
-
Hot Press
Fiercely independent singer-songwriter knocks it out of the park again.
-
HS Insider
Fiona Apple’s ‘Fetch The Bolt Cutters’ is a whip-smart, eccentric masterpiece.
-
PopMatters
It's bold, it's demanding, and it might very well go down as the finest full-length Fiona Apple has ever made.
-
Earbuddy
For me, I think it is the album of the year, and the only thing holding it back from a 10 from me is the album’s final song, “On I Go”, which feels like a clunky end on an otherwise tight album. At thirteen tracks, “On I Go”, could have gone away. But Bolt Cutters is an album that won’t be leaving my rotation anytime soon.
-
Louder than War
Fetch The Bolt Cutters is a remarkable album that couldn’t feel any more timely. It’s the call-to-action that many of us need right now and proves that, almost 25 years since the release of her first album, Fiona Apple remains as essential as she’s ever been.
-
Daily Mail Online
With her rousing vocals, rumbling piano and painfully good lyrics, Fiona Apple's new album, Fetch The Bolt Cutters, is one hell of an achievement.
-
Sungenre
Apple has created a work so full of power and realness as to be almost unmatched. Fetch the bolt cutters: a new American classic has arrived.
-
The Arts Desk
This album turns the sound of panic attacks and partially overcome self-loathing into proudly rigorous art.
-
Vox
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is the impotent fury of right now in convenient album form.
-
411MANIA
Fetch The Boltcutters, a wickedly rhythmic and crooked rumble through a tortured psyche.
-
The Tower
Amidst the mainstream noise incessantly cluttering the radio, “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” breaks free from the reign of the modern music industry. Her artistry challenges music boundaries today, delivering unconventional yet maddening lyrics that articulate every emotion in one album. Fiona Apple has been criticized and overlooked, but she will not be silenced.
-
musicOMH
Yet while it’s certainly not an album for background listening, those who are willing to invest some time in it will be rewarded by one of the most remarkable records released this year.
-
The Telegraph
a masterpiece for the #MeToo era.
-
Loud and Quiet
Like the very best music, it contains multitudes – it’s a rallying cry for those without a voice, a deep lesson in empathy, a dive into a singular mind, a damn good pop record.
-
The Irish Times
The end result is a bracing collection of songs that, perhaps, won’t suit some radio playlists but that, in a cultural sense, settle satisfactorily alongside more contemporary female songwriters such as Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Kesha and Lorde.
-
wers
“FETCH THE BOLT CUTTERS” IS AN INSTANT CLASSIC.
-
I News
This is an album which turns the sound of panic attacks and self-loathing into proudly rigorous art. It is another step out of the title’s locked room.
-
The Firenote
All in all, Fiona Apple has delivered an album that set a high standard, no doubt a strong contender for album of the year.
-
Spectrum Pulse
It’s richly nuanced but raw, fractured but thematically solid, hitting as hard as she ever has but inconsistent in its impact.
-
Get Alternative
In addition to being masterfully made, and deeply insightful, there’s a sense of wonder to it that only an artist as enigmatic as Fiona Apple can create.
-
afterglow
A lot happens at once in these songs, but on Fetch The Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple is more clear-eyed than ever. Where she was once transparent about her self-destruction, the artist is now uncompromising in her desire for respect.
-
The Young Folks
The album, is so complex and filled to the brim with emotion, that it requires multiple encounters. With every repetition of the Fiona Apple experience, new sounds and lyrics are discovered, making it an attentive journey that sees no end. Sonically intimidating at times, you can’t help but want to know more about each and every song. That is the artistic power expected from Fiona Apple and Fetch The Bolt Cutters is her showing just the kind of executioner that she is.
-
Bernard Zuel
Apple is wholly fascinating and Fetch The Bolt Cutters never stops intriguing, right down to the closing duo of sweet pop on top of country blues in Drumset and the angular arthouse of On I Go.
-
The Arts Fuse
Not only is Fetch the Bolt Cutters the most stunning of Apple’s five albums, it’s the most impressive pop record of this young pandemic year, its bottled turmoil speaking to our own pent-up nerves.
-
Freaky Party
The result is that this seems not so much an album as a sudden glorious eruption; after eight long years, an urgent desire to be heard.
-
Stereoboard
‘Fetch The Bolt Cutters’ is an ever-evolving beast that constantly surprises as the layers of complexity peel away with time and familiarity. This is the ideal time to give it the attention it deserves, and that investment will ensure that everyone’s relationship with it is different. This is music that will inspire passion, conversation and engagement.
-
Nowhere Bros
“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is a fantastic album, an outstanding industry comeback, and maybe just maybe the early marker for album of the year. It is that good.
-
The Indiependent
Again, FTBC is not easy listening, but it’s witty, honest, and liberating. The world may still be bullshit, but at least we have artists like Fiona Apple to hold it accountable.
-
Secret Meeting
While we’re all spending more time with ourselves than ever before, the queen of introversion’s return has never felt so timely.
-
Uproxx
Throughout my listens of Fetch The Bolt Cutters, I kept having the same thought: I can’t imagine another person on Earth, living or dead, making this album. This, ultimately, is what was happened during Fiona’s hiatus away from the rest of us: She became her own genre. How lucky are we that it just grew by one more classic.
-
Cherwell
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is a work with the refined knowledge of the escape artist, the wire-walker, the trapeze artist: that winning elixir of muscle memory and self-knowledge.
-
Spin
The reclusive singer-songwriter reemerges with a challenging new record that was well worth the wait.
-
Inquirer
Fiona Apple is extraordinary again on the new ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’.
-
Mediate
the album is “an unyielding masterpiece.”
-
University Press
“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is full of feels; it’s a kaleidoscope of moments and reactions made into a work of art. But in the context of the current locked-down state of the world, perhaps the most significant offering of this album is the reminder that you don’t have to go far to be transported by inspiration.
-
The DePaulia
The self-produced atmosphere of “Fetch the Bolt Cutters” can at times be abrasive at first listen but the honesty of the production only conceives a better more connected experience in the end.
-
The Rich Report
There is a lot to love on Fetch The Bolt Cutters. Apple deserves all the praise for making herself as vulnerable and personal as she does on here. The songwriting is fantastic throughout the record, but there are some experimental sounds that just don’t work for me.
-
Best Beatmaking Software
A Wild, Frenzied, Delighted Gift.
-
Fresh Air
Fetch the Bolt Cutters is filled with rage; it’s uncompromising, free and seamlessly moves through topics spanning from abusive relationships in ‘For Her’ and ‘Newspaper’ to high school experiences in ‘Shameika’. This release illustrates Apple being able to truly make the music she has wanted to make for a long time, eschewing any kind of expectations previously placed on her.
Rate This Album and Leave Your Comments