Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Fiona Apple's Grammy award nominated album from 2020, is as refreshing as Snow Monkeys taking a bath in thermal springs.

I have to admit to arriving late to the party, as I've only just recently started listening to this, but it dropped in March. I blame this on Spotify's algorithm which apparently still doesn't understand my eclectic taste in music, not in the way YouTube scarily knows me and sucks productivity out of my time.

Yet March of 2020 seems the perfect moment to have listened to this work, as much of it was recorded at Apple's home with her band and using found, improvised percussion instruments. There's a sense of home and confinement to the sound but it also expresses freedom, especially freedom of expression.

Listening to this for the first time is like meeting an expert storyteller at a bar and making a new best friend. The album opens with I Want you to Love me. This track sets the tone for much of the album. It starts with a drum machine and synth skeletal fingerprint, which may have been the original creative spark before morphing into a full fledged song.

The song itself converses with a hypothetical lover whilst examining the fleeting ephemeral nature of existence from the perspective of quantum physics. This brings me to the first problem some people might have with this album which is if you're the kind of person who thought Yummy by Justin Beiber was the song of 2020, well this album probably isn't for you.

For example, this song finishes with Fiona Apple emitting feral yelps into the microphone as though channeling some primal urge directly from her soul. Moments like these can be borderline avant-garde Jazz and will just put some people off. However, if you like that level of creative and emotional overflow or can look past it, you're in for a treat.

Shaemeika the second track, is a hopping 5/8 chant with an enigmatic chorus which gives the listener a break from the frenetic verses.

Under the table is definitely the winner for the title "on constant repeat" for me. An anthem for free speech, framed around the banal situation of being at a fancy dinner and disagreeing vehemently with the people at the table. Take that Karens of the world!

Relay is a circular song comprising of various chants and rhythms railing against corporate power layered on top of each other. A song whose theme and structure are woven expertly together, but lyrically Fiona breaks the vicious cycle by observing that hating such figures is to be trapped in that very rat race people want to avoid.

But I know if I hate you for hating me
I will have entered the endless race

Rack of his is a haunting description of unrequited love, Newspaper is series of vocal melodies blended over a dense canvas of rhythms which ebbs and flows in intensity.

Ladies is an intimate heartfelt conversation with the women of the world to unite. Heavy balloon has a tight groove where Fiona really expresses the bluesy tones of her voice.

This album is one of those pieces of music where I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall during the creative process. There's an organic, flying by the seat of your pants but tempered by technique vibe from this work; that in a world of overproduced pop music, thought up by suits in a marketing division gives me hope for the future of music. Check this album out, you won't regret it.

If anybody has any requests or recommendations for me to write about in Have You Heard? Please leave them in the comments below. If this music blog is going to work on Wattpad I'll need feedback, otherwise, I'm just talking to myself about music, which isn't the end of the world I suppose!