Fiona Apple "Extraordinary Machine"

"Extraordinary Machine" is great, anyway, as is "Better Version Of Myself" (the other leaked track). Fiona increasingly reminds me of Rufus Wainwright.

Anyway, her second album, "When the Pawn..." is fantastic. If the new one's even half as good, it'll be better than most.

You mean

> Jon Brion increasingly reminds me of Jon Brion

Fuck Sony.

http://www.angelfire.com/wa2/nadjadee/index201.html

how did you find these?

Not really.

Are they still definitely sitting on the album?

I like Extraordinary Machine!

They should just drop her and let her buy back the record. This is very cruel.

What kind of drugs are Sony on, not releasing this?

pdfreeman at gmail dot com

Thanks in advance. I'll provide something suitable in exchange on request, of course.

(Also, I can't imagine Fiona Apple's Fiona Appleness helps things very much.)

And this is COMPLETELY the correct marketing route for Sony to go with this album. I for one would have never listened to it if it had just come out in the stores like any other great album.

The Lex (alex_macpherso...), July 20th, 2004

have you been smoking crack again alex?

true innovation is invariably labelled 'weird', 'difficult' and 'challenging' ie. a bitch to market.

the market loves familiarity, digestibility and safe-plays.

seriously kids, if you want a career in music, you need to CARBON COPY the last most successful thing out there. being 'original' is not clever and above all else DON'T TAKE RISKS, try and get a good dash of mediocrity into all your output.

follow your own muse my friends and fellate obscurity at your leisure - you have been warned...

Also, her voice sounds so much more fucking CONFIDENT now.

Better Version Of Me
Get Him Back
Oh Sailor
Please Please Please
Used To Love Him
Waltz

thanks! xxx

I like Fiona a lot, but I confess that I don't think I could listen to her without Jon Brion and Matt Chamberlain.

http://www.geekdreams.com/mp3/fiona_apple/

It's a pretty great album - infinitely better than Tidal and sort of a continuation of When the Pawn. I've heard Capitol was trying to buy EM from Sony. Andy Slater (Fiona's old manager) is the president of Capitol Records, so that would make sense.

http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,66926,00.html

'Oh Sailor' is my favourite. It's got that wonderful full on, bruised, masochistic thing going on that she does so well. I just wish I had a less muddy mix of it.

If you like 'Used To Love Him', have a listen to 'Strange Bath' from Jon Brion's soundtrack to I Heart Huckabees - it'll sound quite familiar.

This has to be released now, yes? Shelving it would be idiocy, this is the quintessential crossover album which converts even previous haters as well as the mainstream. I don't think it would even require particularly non-traditional marketing ploys.

"With her third album, Extraordinary Machine, collecting dust on some shelf in the basement of Epic's headquarters, and on the iPod of anyone with even a working knowledge of computers, Fiona Apple's starting anew, and hoping the second time's the charm. According to an Epic spokesperson, Apple's taking another stab at her third disc, and has been working with Brian Kehew (Moog Cookbook). No word yet on when — if ever — this one might surface. ..."

I'm a bit gutted, actually. Oh well.. here's hoping this new album is as good as EM.

The rumor is that I suddenly think she's an idiot. That album sold me on Brion even more than it sold me on Fiona.

Fiona Apple, the smoky-voiced singer whose unreleased third album turned into a cause célèbre for her fervent fans and was leaked online, has recorded new versions of its songs and plans to release the album on Oct. 4, according to people involved with the recording.

The album, "Extraordinary Machine," is the Grammy-winning artist's first studio CD in six years, and is likely to be one of the industry's most closely watched albums at the start of the preholiday rush. The CD may also place Ms. Apple and her label, Epic Records, in the unusual position of watching how fans and critics judge her new release against the leaked versions of her earlier recordings of the same songs. The 12-song CD includes nine new versions of material that had circulated on unlicensed Internet file-swapping networks, two previously leaked songs and one brand-new one, "Parting Gift."

The label is wasting little time in tapping fans' curiosity. Epic plans today to reveal a new version of Ms. Apple's Web site, on which fans can hear two of the album's songs, "Parting Gift" and the rerecorded "O' Sailor." The latter will also be available for listening at myspace.com, the online social network. Tomorrow major online music services plan to begin selling "O' Sailor" as a single, and Apple's iTunes music service is expected to offer an exclusive bundle of the two songs for $1.98.

Mike Elizondo, the album's producer, said most of the songs sound "radically different" from the earlier, leaked renditions, which Ms. Apple had made with the producer Jon Brion. Mr. Elizondo said that he had listened to the earlier cuts, but "once we headed off in our direction I didn't go back to reference them."

"Everything was done from scratch," he added.

Only time will tell whether that will turn out to be a shrewd move. The leaked version of the album earned favorable reviews from critics. Jon Pareles, writing in The New York Times in April, called - it "an oddball gem." On the other hand, the songs never became as popular online as other bootleg sensations, like "The Grey Album," the celebrated - and unauthorized - compilation of songs pairing Jay-Z's raps with the Beatles' melodies that circulated online last year. To many, the muted response online suggested that Epic and Ms. Apple were right to continue polishing the material. In an e-mail message yesterday, Ms. Apple said: "Now that my album is finally finished, I am very, very excited to have people hear what we did. I am so proud of it, and of all of us who worked on it."

Epic has also been hungry to release a new CD from Ms. Apple, who burst onto the pop scene in 1996 with a low, smoldering voice and an intriguing twist on confessional songwriting. Her first CD, "Tidal," sold 2.7 million copies. The second, "When the Pawn ...," was released in 1999 and has sold 920,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Given the amount of time since her last album and the still-avant-garde nature of the finished songs, many people involved with Ms. Apple's career expect her label to take a laid-back and low-cost approach to marketing the album, relying partly on word-of-mouth to build an audience.

But until now, the evolution of "Extraordinary Machine" had all the makings of a public-relations disaster for Epic and its corporate parent, Sony BMG Music Entertainment. In January Mr. Brion told MTV News that he had completed the album in May 2003, and that the company had shelved it. For their part, fans organized online to demand its release.

Record executives, however, insist Ms. Apple herself believed the album remained a work in progress. "It was never in a place where she wanted it out," said one executive, who spoke on condition of anonymity to protect a relationship with Ms. Apple.

Though the leak began with just two tracks, eventually 11 wound up on the Internet. Ms. Apple was already several months into rerecording many of them with Mr. Elizondo, who has been known primarily for his work as a session musician and writer for the rap megaproducer Dr. Dre.

When the earlier versions were leaked, "for a split second I was like, 'are we going to get to keep working on this?' " Mr. Elizondo said. But "there wasn't even a moment where anybody said anything," he continued. "I think from right out of the gate, this is the collection of songs she wanted for her record."

The release of "Extraordinary Machine" echoes a situation faced by another popular act, the Dave Matthews Band, four years ago. Weeks after the band released "Everyday," an album produced by Glen Ballard, Mr. Matthews and his bandmates discovered that an album's worth of songs they had recorded earlier - and then scrapped - had leaked to file-sharing systems and had been heard by untold numbers of the band's followers.

"Everyday" went on to sell 3.6 million copies, but several critics, not to mention hard-core fans, voiced a preference for the somewhat downbeat unreleased material, which had been created with the band's longtime producer, Steve Lillywhite, over the work produced by Mr. Ballard, whose influence gave the band a lighter, more radio-friendly sound. The band rerecorded many of the songs from the so-called "Lillywhite sessions" and released them as the album "Busted Stuff" in 2002. That album has sold an estimated 1.9 million copies.

Apple & oranges!

How do you mean?

I mean that if the re-recorded version sounds like something that's even possible to consider for the first single (read: the simplest, catchiest tune on the record, or the one that provides the most obvious continuity between "When the Pawn..." and the new album), you must conclude that the song has been fucked up something fierce.

I know, this makes me sad.

OK, I guess I should go and listen to it now.

I am filled with trepidation at this news. Most of the songs should be able to withstand whatever's done to them, but still, aargh, why fuck with a pair like Jon Brion and Fiona Apple when they complement each other so well?

I can't get over how idiotic the drum part on the "finished" "O Sailor" is compared to the Brion production.

Nas to thread.

I just opened this thread for the first time I have heard any f.apple since an ex- put a song on an old mix tape for me and so her music has a special sentimental resonance obviously because I am a mush eyed romantic and so to learn jon brion is the producer on her new record a producer who for me places nostalgia and romance and wistfulness so exactly has got me quite excited about listening to this

incidentally the song my ex- introduced me to was "to your love"

I love jon brion, mainly for his soundtrack work of course

This is annoying, I'd really rather not have to say "oh, no, the original Brion mix is the album I love."

The two unchanged songs are "Waltz" and "Extraordinary Machine." You can hear a snippet of the new "Not About Love" (which isn't as good--no strings) on her website.

Top three songs on the album are "Red Red Red," "Extraordinary Machine," and "Please Please Please," as far as I'm concerned.

OTOH, glad that they're not messing with "Extraordinary Machine".

Why not?

I never listened to the leaked one that much, but if anything all the ridiculous press has caused me to pay more attention than I would have to the album. I kind of got the impression from the leaked songs that it was kind of Jon Brion's super happy fun soundtrack album where he just ran wild over the production.

Fun game: listen to the recent Kanye West album, and without looking at credits, write down first what songs Jon Brion worked on, and what you think he did. It's telling.

Wait, what's your point? I do think it's funny that "Drive Slow" wasn't a Brion production: it has all the hallmarks of one.

Good call on "Drive Slow," it's the one I really screwed up on my guesses! I would almost bet that the keyboards on that song were inspired by Brion's style after he'd been in the studio with Kanye a while.

i'm surprised by a) the way not everything is intolerable b) just how much a couple of them have been mutilated.

a) i'm uncomfortable with the new jauntiness of 'o sailor' - it used to be a ballad and now it is...not - but i like the new vocals at the end. 'used to love him' and 'window' are probably better, though not by very much. most are at least tolerable, except...
b) 'get him back' and 'not about love' have been RUINED :( where are the amazing strings on the latter? and the former, which used to be my favourite by some way, sounds completely muffled.

(i say this as a fan of apple more than brion; i think they made a perfect team. it's curious, though - a while ago i kept thinking that kanye west and fiona apple were in many ways musical twins, and now he's got himself her producer and she's got herself someone from the hip hop world...surely the first kanye/fiona collaboration is not far off)

http://gbvbb.homestead.com/files/gygax3.jpg

http://gbvbb.homestead.com/files/gygax3.jpg

http://gbvbb.homestead.com/files/gygax3.jpg

http://gbvbb.homestead.com/files/gygax3.jpg

The only one I have a problem with is still "Not About Love" - the only one where I thought Brion did a way, way better job. "Tymps" can kinda go either way. Right now, I just slightly prefer Brion's version but that could change tomorrow. In any case, her vocals are generally MUCH stronger on this record than on the leaked versions.

i don't know how to use the internets so haven't heard the brion version ('SS2003'?). is it gonna get a proper release? or where can i look for it?

I'd like a copy of that...

Elaborate please! It it an image thing (the image wrought by his production choices I mean, not a lifestyle thing) or what? I think he's quite great m'self

xpost but Froom is about grandeur - Brion is about squahsed/Joseph Cornell'd grandeur!

listen to the first better version of me. it sounds like an unfinished demo.

the only brion tune that is better is not about love, for the drama. and the final version of that is nice anyway.

I think there's a lot to like about the released version, but the Brion version in general has better vocal takes (maybe because they were just tossed down as placeholders in some cases) and more life in the arrangements.

i don't really hear the difference in the vocals. actually, i don't really hear a significant difference between the two versions, not about love apart. most of the released songs are slightly more worked-out, slightly less-cluttered takes on what Brion did. if it wasn't for the whole fuss, noone would really care.

The Brion versions may be busier arrangement-wise, but to me they feel more spacious because of the instrumentation. The Elizondo versions have simpler arrangements but a lot more layers of sound, as well as that pop style of mixing where all the levels are pretty much flat except for the vocals.

I agree, and I'm looking forward to the dual-disc release in 2008.

I think it's pretty tough to judge something like the sound in favor of Jon Brion when a) mixing was never finished on his version and b) you have to listen to his version on crappy who-knows-what generation MP3s, but hey...

Elaborate please! It it an image thing (the image wrought by his production choices I mean, not a lifestyle thing) or what? I think he's quite great m'self

i don't know and i'm not sure i can explain why! on strictly musical grounds i think it's b/c i've never liked the beatles' production either (it's cloying and "clever," and one of the main things about them that hold me back from being a fan). on image grounds it's probably that i find brion-worshippers pretty despicable (they're such stick-up-ass yuppies that even their CDs have to come with "quality assurance" stickers). "morning becomes eclectic" can go suck a fuck.

(I haven't listened to the rest of the album that much so far, although I think it's quite good, if a little too much of the same thing from song to song.)

i mean the song is kind of *about* awkwardness, mentions it, etc!

x-post

Right. I guess you could complain about artists using that as an excuse. "This song is about awkwardness so it's awkward," "This song is about being a complete fuck up so it's just fucked up," etc. But I think it's very clear at the same time that the song is under control, that the awkwardness has been worked up into an artifact.

x-post

Haha, well maybe a slow year for rock.

'sgt peppers lonely hearts club band'

Although I can't think off-hand of a genre that has been said to have had an especially good year in 2005*. (Maybe reggaeton, but that has more to do with it's status in the market. Maybe country, since that country thread just seems to go on and on.)

*This is unnecessary awkwardness, but it's too early to rewrite.

Yes, if the album were submitted to me I'd mark it up with my red pen too.

and then I'd turn to you, because as a fellow pedant you'd appreciate it!

"overly wordy": redundant. "Wordy" already entails excess.
"awkwardly phrased": are you addressing the phrasing of the songs (not sure what that would mean), or of the singing?
"lack memorable melodies": construction is not parallel. Change to "melodically undistinguished".

the released version of this album is still really good. listen to it all the time. about time for a new one from her (which I think is coming out this year? who knows)

I really like the released version of this album. The original mixes were good, but the released version cleaned things up nicely.

I remember when it was released, I was working at Tower Records and heard it every day (sometimes numerous times in a day) so I got kind of burned out on it, but I go back to it now and it strikes me as her pop masterpiece. The Idler Wheel was good, but it seems like it was too "weird" — purposely in quotes like that because it seemed a little forced, I guess. But Extraordinary Machine perfectly balances the "weird" with the accessible if you ask me.

How extraordinary – was listening to this album last night. So good.

I had forgotten just how potent and intense a song 'Not About Love' is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u09s0uz0tEU

Serious business.