Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel...

Fiona Apple - Finished almost two years ago, fourth album of careening, confessional emotional bloodletting from reclusive 34-year-old L.A. songwriter is as lean, taut and angular as her recent press imagery...more than 15 years after her bold debut Tidal, Apple remains an brilliant, eccentric pop oddity of the first magnitude...troubled, angry and sharp as razor, Wheel is a series of off-kilter peaks into the dark recesses of our favorite haunted soul // Release: The Idler Wheel... (June 19, Epic/Sony) // Sounds like: Apple and co-producer/percussionist Charley Drayton created the album's striking piano-centric sound, stripping the songs to their naked core and then tossing in the random rhythmic undertow: “I wanted to make everything as stark as possible, so you could hear everything,” Apple tells the NY Times...

Quote: “I’m a very stressed-out person, a lot, because still everything is so important,” she said. “I have to give everything, my everything, and that’s exhausting, and how the hell am I going to do that for the rest of my life? But I’m going to have to figure out how.” // What we like: "Every Single Night" is replete with all the usual precocious stock-in-trade quirks: the minor chord mystery, the remarkably eccentric, quave-o-matic vocals and a careening theatrical melody that sounds like it's had maybe one too many on its way to the bridge..."Werewolf" exemplifies Wheel's twisty musical strategy: a scurrying, unpredictable melody, tumbling lyrics, random percussive embellishments and Apple's assertive vocals with a hint of quavering uncertainty...Our favorite? The lovely "Valentine"...

Fiona Apple - "Anything We Want" (from The Idler Wheel)

Fiona Apple - The Idler Wheel Sampler

Photo Credit: Chad Batka for The New York Times