arts // no. §

Quarantine Is driving
everyone insane, it seems

> ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’ Album Review

James Wetmore
Contributor

 

keen

hen I decided to review this album,

I did not know what I was getting
into. Most of what I know of Fiona Apple’s
music is from her 1996 debut album Tidal,
which was experimental and artsy, but
nothing too radical. Then I listened to her
new album, and my goodness this whole
thing is just one big trip. From the first few
songs your idea of experimental music is
flipped, stretched, and torn apart, then
covered in a thick wall of kind of weird.

Instrumentation on this record is

for the most part sparse, with most of the
songs based around a duo of vocals and
percussion with the odd piano or keys
thrown in there. Something about the
whole thing feels wrong, for lack of a better
term, as you can easily feel disorientated

with constant interwoven layers of vocals
and odd percussions thrown at you from
every angle.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters feels like a
companion piece to the current quarantine
taking place, as many people are wanting
to get back to normal and break free of the
chains holding them at home. Lyrically
the album explores a similar theme of
liberation, the title reflecting that one
should fetch their own tool of liberation
and break free from whatever it may be
that is holding them back. The songs
on this album reveal that Fiona Apple’s
restraints come from past bullying, sexual
assault, romantic debacles, amid many
other themes that are beautifully paired
with the hectic music that carries them.

Songs like “Newspaper” and “Relay”
display Apple’s amazing use of her voice,
channeling Stevie Nicks as she delivers
lines such as “I resent you for being raised
right, I resent you for being tall, I resent

 

you for never getting in any
opposition at all, I resent you
for having each other,’ and “T
too, used to want him to be
proud of me, and then I just
wanted him to make amends,
I wonder what lies he’s told
you about me, to make sure
that we'll never be friends.”
The layers upon layers of
vocals on most of these tracks
hammer in the distorted and
confused mind frame that
one would be in if they were
being controlled by a partner,
always being told what to
think or what to do.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters is raw, rough,
potentially even unfinished sounding,
but that just adds to the aggression that
Fiona Apple is trying to push—wanting
you to feel uncomfortable or caught off
guard. It’s hypnotic how the songs weave

theotherpress.ca

 

‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters' album cover

from one idea to the next, never losing
your attention but never fully giving itself
away, always keeping you on your toes. I do
not understand how you can make a song
sound so tribal yet sound like it would fit
right in at cheer practice. It is all the right
kinds of weird.

Lots of catching up

» ‘Art-House America’ shows the importance of independent cinemas

Jerrison Oracion
Senior Columnist

 

[nccrendent cinemas or art-house
cinemas are community spaces for film.
Many people—including me—who like
movies go to these places to see films

that you cannot see in a multiplex. This
includes movies that are presented on
film rather than digitally. There are also
locations to talk about film and go beyond
the film with conversation panels—there
are also places where you can get popcorn
made the old-fashioned way like in the
early years of movie theatres.

When I go to the Vancity Theatre,
the staff and some of the other people
that I see inside know me and we talk
about the film that we are about to watch,
as well as some of the other films that
are currently playing or coming soon.
These cinemas are also communities.
They are all currently closed because of
the coronavirus pandemic; when this
pandemic ends, I plan to go to a theatre
and eat popcorn. All of this inspired me
to watch a show I have been enjoying:
Art-House America. It is a web show from
streaming service The Criterion Channel.

It shows the history of some of the
most famous art-house cinemas in the

 

United States and why they are important
in discovering, developing, and preserving
cinema. The programmers in these
cinemas talk about how they curate their
films and why they show them to their
audiences as well as the outreach programs
that they do in their communities. In each
episode, their interviews are accompanied
by the films that are currently being shown
in their cinema.

In the episode on the Jacob Burns
Film Centre in Pleasantville, New York, I
learned that film labs allow filmmakers
to develop their craft. Additionally, the
late director Jonathan Demme (who
directed The Silence of the Lambs) is
important in the curation of the Jacob
Burns Film Centre’s programming and
they show his rarely seen films. After that,
I watched the Talking Heads concert film
Stop Making Sense directed by Demme
(this band might have inspired a famous
Canadian band called Arcade Fire). After
late director Bernardo Bertolucci saw
this film, he got the lead member of the
Talking Heads, David Byrne, to do parts
of the score of The Last Emperor.

Film discussion is the theme in the
episode on the Walter Reade Theatre in
New York City. There is an episode on
The Loft Cinema in Tucson, Arizona.

This theatre is as fun as The Rio Theatre;
this interesting theatre takes their show
on the road and show films to people

in hard to reach places. The idea of

the art-house cinema as a community
space is discussed in the episode on The
Texas Theatre in Dallas, Texas—and the
Northwest Film Forum in Seattle. An
interesting episode is the episode on

the Gold Town Nickelodeon in Juneau,
Alaska—I learned that it was initially
used to show the founder’s documentary
about the history of the gold rush in the
city, and it was used to show other films
only to fund the theatre.

The current curator of the theatre,
Collette Costa, is fun and knowledgeable.
You can even watch the documentary
that is seen in the episode. Criterion
Collection recently did a GoFundMe
where they raised $500,000 to help
art-house cinemas stay open after the
pandemic—they even got donations from
Wes Anderson and Netflix. While movie
theatres will not be open again for awhile,
you can learn about their significance
with Art-House America. After you watch
it though, you probably will want to go to
a movie theatre.