Tidal by Fiona Apple (Tidal - Fiona Apple)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Tidal - Fiona Apple
Date:	04/09/08 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Debut record from a talented pianist and singer.

Disadvantages: Lyrically raw - but at least she's trying, and breakthroughs come from stretching yourself.

Fiona Apple - Tidal

Accomplished debut album from the then nineteen-year-old singer, writer and pianist, although her musicianship may have outstripped her songs at this nascent stage of her career. MTV awarded her their award for best new artist in 1997 and she won a Grammy the following year for best female rock vocal performance. Rolling Stone readers also considered "Criminal" to be the best song of 1997. Her penchant for angry tirades subsequently led to a media backlash. In 2008, another American magazine, Entertainment Weekly, reckoned Tidal was the twentieth best album since 1983, and in 2005 Blender deemed "Criminal" the seventy-first best song since 1980.

Track One - Sleep To Dream

The deep vocal is surly and defiant and the drumbeat echoes murkily - perhaps as though underwater - whilst the piano glimmers and dapples through the trees. The song moodily wrestles with deception, pity and pride, and ultimately views love as a confrontation. Producer Jon Brion contributes guitars and vibraphone, and there is also a chamberlain to accompany bass and drums.

Track Two - Sullen Girl

A slow, jazz-tinged piano ballad, with a sweetly haunted melody, sparkling sparingly amidst the broody accompaniment, which also includes optigan, pedal steel guitar, vibraphone, chamberlain, dulcitone and marimba.

Track Three - Shadowboxer

The rhythm section sets up a slow and steady waltz underneath the piano chords. There's also a percussive tack piano, and a swelling string-like spookiness conjured up around the margins, presumably with the vibraphone and the chamberlain again. Apple sings about the games played on the boundaries between love and friendship.

Track Four - Criminal

The most well known song on the album, which was promoted with an accompanying music video that featured Apple looking suspiciously undressed, and this after she had been publicly critical of such conceits. The intention was presumably some sort of knowing commentary on the exploitation of teenage jailbait in the MTV age - although it was left to The New Yorker magazine to point out years afterwards that she had resembled nothing else as much as "an underfed Calvin Klein model". Nonetheless it picked up some awards, as Apple claimed the song was about "feeling bad for getting something so easily by using your sexuality." Fortunately the musical merit of the song is beyond reproach, even if the opening come-on is "I've been a bad, bad girl." The rhythmic and percussive arrangement is probably the closest Tidal gets to the line-up of a conventional rock and roll band, although the sound is densely layered, and, as always, keys take precedence over guitars, even if Fiona doesn't play piano on this one herself. The tune is strong, and Apple delivers a smoky performance.

Track Five - Slow Like Honey

Another smouldering ballad in which Apple admirably tips her hat to the style of jazz musicians and singers of a past age, whilst comfortably keeping things sounding modern enough. The voice is soft and throaty and bright and the piano shuffles and twinkles by turns.

Track Six - The First Taste

This track relies more heavily on drum programming, which can be a bit distracting at times, but many of the distinctive instruments featured earlier on the record continue to keep things lively. It's not the strongest tune or lyric, but the song is amiable enough. Now might be a good time to point out that the lyrics on this album in general tend to overreach - in the way that all precocious teenagers probably do - but Fiona is a natural enough singer in her phrasing to present her material with far greater conviction than a lesser talent could muster, and so what might appear misguidedly wordy written down happens to work just fine sung aloud, and never feels obtrusive.

Track Seven - Never Is A Promise

The words to this one are a case in point. It really does contain the line "the shades and shadows undulate in my perception" not just once but twice, and the whole record is actually full of egregiously clunky lines like that ["I'll invade your demeanour"?!]. But the rest of that verse is sung so beautifully ("but as the scenery grows I see in different lights [... ] my feelings swell and stretch; I see from greater heights, I understand what I am still too proud to mention ") and she then goes and sings the line "you'll say you'll understand, you'll never understand, I'll say I'll never wake up knowing how or why" with such sweet simplicity and fragility that you instantly forgive her, and wonder why she can't tell which lines work and which ones don't. When she sings: "I realize what I am now too smart to mention - to you" we can't help but wait for the day when that is true. But the quality of thought underlying the lyrics is always lucid and strong, and it feels redundant to wish this would find fuller expression when the clarity of the voice and piano is such as it is. You forget the artist is only nineteen, and Never Is A Promise is one of several songs that hint how substantial a talent Apple's will be at full maturity. Van Dykes Parks, the former Beach Boys collaborator, oversees the cello, violin and viola. In the CD booklet the lyrics are reprinted next to a photograph of Apple, who is pouting in a long dark raincoat, with cocky eyes and straight hair, looking somewhat like a cross between Iggy Pop and Liam Gallagher.

Track Eight - The Child Is Gone

Another accomplished piano ballad with slow rolling rhythms and atmospheric arrangements accompanying the now distinctive sultry voice which sings "suddenly I feel like a different person". This one features optigan, harp and pedal steel guitar.

Track Nine - Pale September

The imagery in this song is vivid but the words are laboured so thankfully the delivery of the phrasing is not. The track repeats a simple ghostly riff and has a lovely soft tone and texture to the choruses. At nearly six minutes it's a bit too long. If I'm honest I think this one sounds more wintry than autumnal. Even if the days are growing dark the air hangs still but thrillingly alive.

Track Ten - Carrion

The vocal delivery is more delicate here than on many of the songs and settles into a higher register. The song flutters deftly along at first before breaking into a more sombrely stern tone and then dreaming off again in the breeze. This is the only song on the record without piano. It begins with gentle bass and drums and harp, and then Jon Brion lets electric guitars and vibraphone steer things noisily home.

Fiona Apple's follow up album to Tidal was entitled "When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and if You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and if You Fall It Won't Matter, 'Cuz You'll Know That You're Right" and if you think I'm reviewing that you can think again.

Summary: Deserved its success in the late nineties.