Classic Album: Fiona Apple – ‘Tidal’

Once upon a time in the mid-90s, overcoming grunge abstinence and witnessing the unbridled rash of Brit rock and pop bands leading the charts, the most expressive and versatile voice sneaks through a buttonhole.

It seems to defy a whole decade, setting up a classic and amusing atmosphere, yet tormented, provocative and full of questions. She opens her heart to us, uncovering her primal pains through dark and heartbreaking lyrics where the audience is the willing victim of the residual effects of a jazzy and alternative blast.

This way, Fiona Apple turns herself into a society debutant, stripped of gloves and pearls; nude, dancing with her own ghosts. Blessed by veins full of artistic blood of more than one generation and developed in a more transgressor and contemporary style, she’s trying to survive unpleasant situations where our ignorance provides a seductive mystique.

This twenty-year-old New Yorker broke into world’s music scene in the summer of 1996, looking to become a piece of shade in extensive miles of sunny sand sometimes swirled by bubblegum pop bands. ‘Tidal‘ arrives. The album starts with the intense ‘Sullen Girl‘, often regarded as autobiographical in response to adverse circumstances of her youth: “They don’t know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea/ but he washed my shore and he took my pearl /And left and empty shell of me.”

‘Shadowboxer‘ emerges as tough criticism to a relationship worthy of the most painful punishment, followed by ‘Sleep To Dream‘, one of the best songs on the album, and also very rebellious, where a lethal combination of magnetism and drama clashes with one of the most result-effective qualities when composing any song; anger.

‘Slow Like Honey‘ has one of the album’s most beautiful lyric, where her intensity is still noticeable, this time expressed more poetically. “Seduction and a message: Though dreams can be deceiving / Like faces are to hearts / They serve for sweet relieving / When fantasy and reality / Lie too far apart.”

‘Carrion‘ and ‘The First Taste‘ provide a different touch and set a lovely
atmosphere. The former following the steps of a psych folk sound while the latter combines alternative rock and African American jazz, where a subtle resemblance to Sade’s ‘No Ordinary Love‘ is apparent from time to time.

‘Tidal‘ has given its audience a number of hits which found their place within the top positions of the music charts of the time, such as ‘Never Is A Promise‘ and her most popular hit to date, ‘Criminal‘. A song with strong lyrics where Fiona Apple reveals her self-criticism, embarrassed and thirsty for compassion; delivered with the rudeness of a piano full of personality and taken to the mainstream scene through a controversial video.

‘Tidal’ is an album that will never go out of style. A compilation of beautiful songs that tell the story of a young woman who has lived. She has exposed herself, revealing her deepest sorrow and regrets, without any sense of feeling prefabricated.

(Vanna Reflex)