Fiona Apple’s ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ review: Back in fine form after 8-year ‘quarantine’
It feels like Fiona Apple really got a big head start on us with this whole quarantining thing. Fans do not need to be reminded that it’s been eight years since her previous album, “The Idler Wheel…” (though they probably will require a refresher on its full 23-word title, which once might have been committed to memory). Anybody else who disappeared as a recording artist for that long would have been out flogging the catalog, something that is assuredly not her bag; even the intermittent cameos she used to do at L.A.’s Largo club halted as she retreated ever inward. That seemed just as it should be, up to a point: In four scant previous albums over a quarter-century, Apple had become pop music’s queen of extremely interior designs.