Just listened to this album and i am not sure what to say....honestly has left my head spinning and in all honesty i am not sure if it is the worst thing i have ever heard or one of the best!
The critics have gone crazy for it though - Pitchfork has given out its first 10/10 for nearly 10 years.
Even Rolling Stone has lauded it with a 4.5 star rating.
Guardian review here gives it 5 stars...
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/apr/17/fiona-apple-fetch-the-bolt-cutters-reviewReviews are at the end of the day just opinions like ours - but it is rare to see an album receive such high and totally unaminous critical acclaim....
Fetch the Bolt Cutters was met with universally positive reviews from critics noted at review aggregator Metacritic.
This release received a weighted average score of 100 out of 100, based on 16 reviews.[7] It is currently the highest acclaimed album in Metacritic history by any artist, excluding reissues.
The album was awarded Pitchfork's first perfect score since Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy in 2010, with Jenn Pelly writing, "No music has ever sounded quite like it."[14][18][19]
Neil McCormick of The Telegraph described it as "a masterpiece for the #MeToo era", writing that it "feels about as real as music can be".[16]
Laura Barton of The Guardian commented on the album's "refusal to be silenced", writing: "The result is that this seems not so much an album as a sudden glorious eruption; after eight long years, an urgent desire to be heard".[10]
Mikael Wood of the Los Angeles Times wrote of the "stunning intimacy of the material here — a rich text to scour", adding "you'd need to go back to the later parts of Nina Simone’s catalog to find another pop vocalist as eager as Apple is to make such a show of unprettiness."[20]
Judy Berman of Time Magazine similarly praised the album for its "conversational tone, manifested in Apple’s talky delivery as well as in lyrics that scan as prose more often than poetry, [which] creates a rare intimacy", and commented that "As beautiful as the melodies and the epiphanies they carry often are, the songs are not what you would call ‘pretty.’...Yet Bolt Cutters wouldn’t be the extraordinary experiment in aural and lyrical honesty that it is if it sounded too polished".[21]
Maura Johnston of the Boston Globe applauded the album for its "matter-of-fact depictions of everyday brutality", and added that "even [during] the most intense moments of Fetch, her lyrics retain a playfulness that acts as a ballast." It also commended Apple's "husky alto", which "remains the focal point, launching into melodies that are instantly sticky as effortlessly as it engages in tensely rhythmic Sprechstimme."[22]
Patrick Ryan of USA Today wrote the album "simmers with defiance, dark wit and quiet rage", describing it as "a dense and richly poetic masterpiece from one of music's best modern storytellers" with "razor-sharp statements and evocative lyrics that reveal themselves in every new listen".[23]
It is a pretty unique record that has left me scratching my head, but wanting to go and listen again....i'll keep you posted.
Anyone else heard it?