Fiona Apple has been telling her fans that a new album is on the way for months now. Last Fall she teased a 2020 release date, in January she said she’d be ready “in a few months,” and earlier this month fans rejoiced when she finally announced she’d completed the long awaited LP.
Apple opened up in an interview with The New Yorker on Monday (March 16), about her fifth studio album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters. In the expansive profile she reveals that the album’s title came from a line she heard from Gillian Anderson‘s character in the British crime drama, The Fall. Her character, a lead detective, calls for the bolt cutters to unlock the door to a room where a young girl has been tortured. “Really, what it’s about is not being afraid to speak,” she told writer Emily Nussbaum.
The album was recorded at her home studio in Venice Beach over the past few years, with the 13 tracks being described as “raw and unslick” and “percussion heavy.”
The article teases songs like “The Drumset is Gone,” “Ladies,” “On I Go,” and “Newspaper,” which features vocals from her sister Amber on a lyric that goes like “It’s a shame, because you and I didn’t get a witness, we’re the only ones who know!” The title track features harmonizing vocals from supermodel Cara Delevingne.
The track “For Her,” was written shortly after Brett Kavanaugh‘s Supreme Court nomination hearings and features the line, “Good Mornin’!, Good Mornin’! You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.”
Apple also recalls her experience quitting cocaine after “one excruciating night” several years ago at Quentin Tarantino‘s house with the director and her then boyfriend Paul Thomas Anderson. “Every addict should just get locked in a private movie theatre with QT and PTA on coke,” she jokes, “and they’ll never want to do it again.”
The album still has no official release date, but we hope we get to enjoy it some time soon. Her 1999 album When the Pawn Hits... will be reissued on vinyl, replacing its original Paul Thomas Anderson-shot cover art. Read the entire New Yorker article here.