‘The Idler Wheel’: The Fiona Apple album that changed Ezra Furman’s life
We’ve all got a record that has the power to bowl us over on every listen; in fact, some of us have multiple.
While some of those might be the albums that the general populace will be able agree on as being the greatest of all time, with landmark achievements in sound such as The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds or David Bowie’s Low being among them, there are modern classics that ought to be recognised in the same breath for how they’ve impacted their listeners in similar ways.
For some, Ezra Furman has created breathtaking records that have captured the hearts of people, whether in her earlier years on records like Day of the Dog or Perpetual Motion People, or on newer masterpieces like All of Us Flames and Goodbye Small Head, and it probably won’t be long until there’s a new generation of artists looking up to her as this totemic figure of inspiration. None of her output can ever be called short of innovation and emotional catharsis, and this is why she’s a perfect candidate to be hailed as one of this current crop’s finest songwriters, whether she’s released her finest work yet or not.
However, for many of Furman’s age, one artist who is constantly cited as being one of the greatest songwriting talents of the American indie era of the 1990s is Fiona Apple. Known for her knotty compositions that usually comprise of little else other than her raw vocals and expressive piano playing, she’s releases five stunning albums that are regularly thrown into the conversation for ‘the greatest ever’, from her debut album, Tidal, that was largely written as a teenager, to her latest opus, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which took a world in lockdown by storm.
Despite being spoilt for choice, Furman’s favourite album from Apple is the one before Fetch the Bolt Cutters; her 2012 album, The Idler Wheel. In an interview with WFUV Radio in 2023, she proclaimed that Apple’s fourth effort is her “favourite album by one of the most powerful sorcerers of our time,” going on to note that the record is full of “heart-slicing songs set to perfectly simple but strange music, delivered with the ideal blend of viciousness and vulnerability.”
While not trying to criticise Furman’s comments, this feels like something of an understatement for an album of this magnitude. The “heart-slicing moments” are in abundance, with Apple’s razor-sharp lyricism and sardonic wit being propelled at the listener with full force. Considering she often takes time between releases, this being the first anyone had heard from Apple in seven years showed that she’d put herself through a considerable amount of turmoil to even create an album like this, and the absolute rawness of some of the songs will have you in a heap trying to figure out how to deal with the second-hand pain.
Not only that, but Apple’s compositional work is as sublime as ever, with vocal melodies weaving their way through piano riffs in ways that one wouldn’t have thought would work. This is the “simple but strange” aspect that Furman talks about, and there are few others who are capable of juxtaposing these two elements together in such a fascinating way. On top of that, the excruciating nature of some of these songs, which deal with themes of heartbreak, grief and agoraphobia, all add up to these primal outbursts that Apple has over the course of the record, leading to the simultaneous “viciousness and vulnerability” that Furman speaks of.
Given how Furman has employed many of these features on her own records while putting her own spin on things, it’s understandable why an album like The Idler Wheel is precious to her. It’s the sort of album that holds the ability to transform any listener and will leave you in awe on every single repeated listen.
