Fetch the Bolt Cutters by Fiona Apple

Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple's fifth album and her first since The Idler Wheel... in 2012, arrived on April 17, 2020, with the world stuck indoors, and a record about breaking out of confinement suddenly sounded like the news. She made most of it at home in Venice, Los Angeles, from 2015 on, producing and playing it with percussionist Amy Aileen Wood, bassist Sebastian Steinberg and multi-instrumentalist Davíd Garza, much of it in GarageBand, which she blames for the unedited vocals and long takes.

The sound is a clattering homemade racket: found objects bashed into rhythm, piano and old-fashioned melodies pushed against beats that feel almost industrial, pop songs that refuse to go where pop songs go. She sings about freedom from oppression, her tangled relationships with other women, bullying and sexual assault, and she's funnier than ever; the title is a line from the TV series The Fall. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, took the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and "Shameika" won Best Rock Performance.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.