Two pictures of Fiona Apple are included with her controversial new album, Extraordinary Machine. The one, on the back, shows Apple sitting in a lawn chair, wearing a low-cut white dress. Behind her, five or six oranges are strewn randomly across a perfectly manicured lawn. Her head, tilted to the side, and her slightly open mouth produce a look that can only mean, "Wanna mess?"
The other is located within the jacket insert. You can see that she's standing in a southern Californian alley of some kind. Emphasizing Apple's face, the shot is certainly beautiful, but her eyes glare at you. They're cold and blue, and, along with her pursed lips and emotionless expression, it's clear that she's upset about something. If you haven't guessed, Apple uses Extraordinary Machine to tell us about that something.
Of course, Mike Elizondo and Jon Brion's expert production pushes the album far beyond other attempts at the angry singer-songwriter formula. The two songs produced by Brion feature the same orchestral tendencies he exhibited with the soundtracks to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and I Heart Huckabees. They act as points of comparison to Elizondo's more traditionally produced tracks.
That's not to say Elizondo's involvement detracts from the album's edginess. He's careful not to overpower Apple's vocal skills; rather, his arrangements accentuate her voice. When she gets particularly jagged, so does the back-up guitar. When she goes all buttery, so does the piano. In this way, you experience Apple's truly remarkable range firsthand. On the title track, for example, she hits the high notes like a veritable opera diva, while with the very next song, "Get Him Back," she's on the bass side of the spectrum, her voice beautifully sonorous and comfortably organic.
A question remains, then: What kind of immovable chip does Apple have on her shoulder? It's not bitterness. "Bitter" is too harsh a word. A better description would be "righteous indignation.", or even indignation with an admixture of remorse. By the album's last third, Apple has lost some of her resentment.
From its initial steadfastness as it transforms into contemplation, we are shown the evolution of anger. It's interesting to try and divine its roots, but ultimately, you don't really care what she's angry about. Sure, it's obvious that she's been left hurt by failed relationships and, specifically, by men. You can presume that she's been pissed the hell off for the last five years and has chosen her new album as a means of personal catharsis. But all of these things stand on the periphery; they're not central to the album's appeal or its design. It's only the reality of Apple's indignation, and not its target, that makes the album standout.
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