As if bursting from the CD jewel case, the musical and sonic marvel and melancholy of Fiona Apple’s second release spills over to the official 90-word poem-turned title:
- When The Pawn Hits The Conflicts He Thinks Like A King
What He Knows Throws The Blows When He Goes To The Fight
And He'll Win The Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters The Ring
There's No Body To Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might
So When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand
And Remember That Depth Is The Greatest Of Heights
And If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where To Land
And If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right
Cue the go-with-yourself idiosyncratic and independent spirit variously but resiliently shadowboxing with reality and relationships, while other forces try to shout down self-doubt. But there's a little more to it here, more dimensionality than was found on Apple's 1996 debut album, Tidal, which, while featuring some compelling songs such as "Criminal" and "Sleep To Dream" -- couched in beyond-her-years sultry vocals -- was marked by some over-reaching lyrical preciousness. All part and parcel to being wide-eyed and 18, but all the more remarkable for it.
Tidal, then, constituted the advent of a promising career for the prodigious, piano-pounding talent. The quantum artistic leaps and bounds displayed only a few years later on 1999's When The Pawn were enormous and largely unexpected, marking a cohesive gamut-sprinting breadth and depth and a sophistication perfectly complemented with the elegant and multi-layered production of studio wiz Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Rufus Wainwright, David Byrne, the Eels). With a drop in comparative sales, however, When the Pawn made for a commercial disappointment; the sophomore jinx held in that regard. But, to quote Apple from last year's long-awaited superb straggler Extraordinary Machine: "Oh Well." I suspect the early fair-weather fickle fans, unable to handle a rewarding challenge, were not much missed.
Thematically, When The Pawn, as an absolutely stunning album of assorted and sundry tales of love formed and torn asunder, emerged from the one-note sullen-girl sulk-fests to embrace a fuller emotional spectrum while sustaining the visceral confessional facets of Tidal. In the tempo-tossed "Fast as You Can" (niftily exemplifying "To Your Love's" word-picture "chugging along to the song that belongs to the shifting of gears"), Apple avers that “I’ll drown in the wonders and the was,” assuring us that not only can the introspective titular (about 59 words in) Depths indeed be the Greatest of Heights, this is one artist unafraid to strap on wings and ascend to the sun -- an Icarian image suggested by "Fast's" allusion: "And for a little while more / I'll soar the / uneven wind, contain and blame / The sterile land."
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