Fiona Apple delivers a true protest song with ‘Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)’
Fiona Apple has shared her first new music in over five years, and, in a surprise to absolutely no one, it’s powerful. ‘Pretrial (Let Her Go Home)’ is a song with a sharp message and a clear sense of purpose as Apple looks down the barrel of an issue, or even points the gun at it herself.
In comparison to other compositions from the artist, this is a relatively sparse one. Instrumentally, it doesn’t really go very far in the near-four-minute run time, instead sticking to the same marching drum beat. But as that foundation feels reminiscent of a stomping crowd, like a protest pounding down a street, it feels apt.
It feels like a decision made to keep focus where Apple wants it to be. By keeping the actual music relatively non-descript yet still impactful and driving, all attention is kept on what it is she’s saying. In this way, the song becomes almost more like a political speech than trying to be anything catchy or even anything all that artistic. Maybe that’s exactly what brought the artist back after such a long gap in releasing original music; maybe it was less about the call to make her own work and more about the call to say something that needed to be said.
The track starkly deals with an issue: mothers being held in pre-trial detention despite being presumed innocent, all because they can’t afford bail. “Wouldn’t let her go home” is repeated in some iteration again and again, pushing the reality into listeners’ brains in the chorus while the verses get into the nitty gritty of this injustice.
Sometimes it is wordy and more complex, but in the song’s finest moments, it’s stark and simple. “She took on extra shifts, still couldn’t pay the bail / No danger, no flight risk, but she would stay in jail,” she sings, laying this issue out bare.
It’s the thing Apple has always done best – weaving between poetry and then a moment that absolutely sucker punches you with an often plain-speaking turn of phrase that seems to get its hard around the neck of the song and grip it. She’s a master at a central, killer line that finds exactly what it is she’s trying to say and shines a glaring light on it. Often it’s beautiful, but in the case of this song, like many of her other darker works, it’s ugly, because it needs to be.
This is a protest song, through and through; from the marching instrumental to the repeated chant-like hooks to the depth to which she explores the topic. But mostly, this is a protest song through intention. To return after a long break and dedicate her first original work in a good while to a clear response to a social issue is a powerful move amidst the global context we’re living in, one where artists, as always, are primed to use their voice, knowing they can speak louder than so many others.
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