Fiona Apple has released a new track from her upcoming album with that enigmatic title, ‘The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do’. The song could just be a lullaby if you stop at the title ‘Every Single Night’, except that there is as much drama, emotion, and intensity as in any other regular Apple’s songs.
It is her first new song in seven years, and her voice, over a delicate orchestration, is as powerful and angry as ever, exploding a few times during the song.
Far from falling asleep every single night, she is ruminating her pain, with ‘butterflies in her brain’ and ideas that ‘percolate the mind’ and ‘trickle down the spine’. All along the song, she talks about suffering as a true entity nibbling her body, even ‘like a second skeleton/trying to fit beneath the skin’. Apple is great with metaphors, especially with those dealing with torment, and my favorite has to be, ‘The rib is the shell and the heart is the yolk/And i just made a meal for us both to choke on’.
The song is expressing mental ache in such a powerful and physical way, almost using a bipolar tone with pondering and crying lows, and triumphant violent highs when Apple’s voice culminates with a fierce ‘With my brain-ain-ain-ain-ain’.
But at the end, she totally embraces her pain as she whispers several times in the song ‘I just wanna feel everything’,… and the ultimate confession, ‘My heart’s made of parts of all that’s around me/And that’s why the devil just can’t get around me’, as if she knew that her misery was her strength.
Listen to this powerful song on Soundcloud: