Fiona Apple shines in brilliant, tortured performance

by matthew webber

Originally appeared in The Waukesha Freeman

The bootleg version of this review, leaked before it was finished, began like this: “Fiona Apple’s Friday night tour stop at Milwaukee’s Riverside Theater was the best concert I’ve ever attended.”

The official version, though, had a few cosmetic edits: “Concert” turned to “show,” “attended” changed to “seen” and “best” became “most challenging,” in spite of my thesaurus.

And the artist herself was alternatingly described as a “brilliant” or “tortured” “singer/songwriter” and “pianist/performer” who “sang” or “screamed” her “songs” or “soul” for two intense hours to a “packed theater”(note: comparing the gathering to a “religious revival” would have been either “hyperbolic” or “dismissive”) in a “manic,” “spastic” and, in both versions, “completely extraordinary” display of emotion, creativity and will.

The remix, however, yet to be released, will probably offer a compromise (or copout): “To me, as a fan as well as a reviewer, who is trying and failing to be brief, objective and interesting, Fiona Apple’s Friday night show was the best, most challenging and most indescribable thing ever.”

* * *

A rock critic or anthropologist in attendance could have filled a notebook (a pocket-sized, hardcover one, let’s say) with observations like these:

Opening act David Garza plays a great flamenco-style guitar but lacks stage presence.

The age range of the audience is surprisingly wide, as graying, bespectacled, professorial types jostle for armrest ownership with dyed, bespectacled, collegiate types. (No little kids, though. Did they spend this week’s concert cash on Raven-Symone?)

Fiona Apple is tiny. Her dress appears to be black. She opens with a new song, “Get Him Back.” Until she screams, her voice is husky and sexy.

Her four backing musicians play expertly yet swingingly, helping control the chaos, sure, but also adding funk to the folk. (The inevitable result of letting Dr. Dre’s bassist produce your album, no?)

Apple plays nearly 20 of her songs, drawing evenly from all three of her albums and saving for the encore her self-affirming, Cole Porter-esque title track (“Extraordinary Machine”), her one, big, decade-old pop hit (“Criminal”) and her tender, slow-burning solo piano ballad (“Parting Gift”).

For many of the songs, she remains behind her piano, pounding it with forces from throughout her entire body. For more of the songs, she moves to center stage, where she sings, speaks, whispers, screams, dances, paces, stomps, thrashes, kneels, lays down and writhes. (Perhaps “convulses” is also an apropos word choice.)

Sometimes, for minutes, she hides behind the piano (by which I mean the audience can’t see her, not that she’s metaphorically lost in the song), clutching her knees and rocking herself from what I can tell, while another musician pounds her songs of heartbreak.

Once, in a baby voice, she tells a story: Boy meets girl; boy breaks girl’s heart. Girl writes song about it; now girl’s going to play it. (“Slow Like Honey,” from her debut album, “Tidal.”)

Did I mention the times when she swats at the air? Or the times when she lowers her microphone while continuing to scream, Tourette’s-like, into the air? When she clutches – no, wrings – her dress as if to knot it? When she whips her microphone cord against some invisible back? Or all the times she veers toward having a public breakdown? When she performs a song, it’s like she performs an exorcism.

Who's more compelled here: me or her?

* * *

“It was kind of hard to watch,” I told a couple of people who asked me about the concert afterward. “But yeah, I think I liked it.”

Both of these statements are not entirely true. The concert was only hard to watch in the way that an out-of-control house fire is hard to watch. The losses of home and history are certainly sad and worthy of your sympathy, but don’t those flames feel warm and look beautiful? As you think about destruction, death and emotion – as you’re safely out of the fire yourself – aren’t you happy it’s not your house ablaze?

In just one night, in just two hours, Fiona Apple appeared to burn herself out. Safe in my seat, watching her, I loved her. And other fans’ shouts of “We love you, Fiona!” gave voice to that love, that sympathy, that voyeurism.

As Apple convulsed on the line between brilliance and insanity, she put everything she had into her music and gave it to us. (A “Parting Gift” indeed.) A true artist, she gave us much more to think about than the usual “I hope she plays my favorite song” (“Shadowboxer,” in my case, which she did play) and “How bad will the traffic be after the show?” (Not bad at all.) As she gave and gave and gave all she had, she made me ponder the meaning of art itself.

A sample question: Is my enjoyment of the art worth the artist’s visible discomfort in sharing it?

A different sample answer: Now I see why she became a recluse for half a decade.

Or else: After burning so brightly, does she have anything left?

* * *

Like the best artists, Fiona Apple provoked numerous comparisons: to fellow songstress Tori Amos, whom I’ve also seen live and who somehow seems able to mine similar emotional territory for musical gems without crumbling herself in the process (while inspiring similarly overwrought metaphors among her devotees); to pop stars like Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey, whose new, self-proclaimed “confessional” lyrics about parties and paparazzi now seem even more vapid in contrast; to the composer Handel, whose “Hallelujah Chorus,” just like Apple’s encore, inspires a standing ovation that continues throughout the entirety of the piece; and even to author Kurt Vonnegut, whose “Breakfast of Champions” (which I re-read in the days leading up to the show) creates an unexpected confluence.

Two new questions: In the spirit of the beginning of that book, is Apple merely a machine, albeit an extraordinary one, who is programmed to compose and perform music and then self-destruct for our pleasure?

Or, in the spirit of the ending, is she a beautiful band of light with the free will to write and play, for as long as she is willing, for the rest of us autonomous light sources?

I’m not sure, but Friday night she glowed like a fuse.

For more information about or writing by the author, visit www.matthewwebber.net.