Many years after her previous album, Fiona Apple returned this year with Fetch The Bolt Cutters, one of the most critically beloved albums in recent memory. The album came out towards the start of the pandemic, and thus, she hasn’t been able to tour in support of it. Apple hasn’t really hopped on the livestream concert train yet either… before this weekend, that is. She and her band participated in the virtual New Yorker Fest on Saturday night (October 10) and performed Fetch The Bolt Cutters songs for the first time. She opted to play the album’s three opening songs: “I Want You To Love Me,” “Shameika,” and the title track.
She also chatted with Emily Nussbaum and discussed a number of topics. Regarding Trump and race, she said:
“I mean, the Supreme Court, all that — all the federal judges, my God. I mean, oh, my God. There’s Proud Boys and our president — our president is a White Supremacist who can’t even manage to deny that he is which I guess is good. But I mean, it’s been so insulting, the way that he’s just gaslighting people in America.
I threw my hands up here right now because I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I think that something good that’s happened this year, I mean, through all the bad stuff that has been happening, I think that, one big thing is happening is that I think that a lot of us have been looking at — or a bigger portion of white people had been examining themselves for the kind of racist tendencies they may have without thinking of themselves as being racist.
Like, thinking about like how do I think about this and why — I think that people are finally being able to, like, look at themselves without getting so defensive that they can’t hear what people need them to hear. I feel like we finally been, like, OK, this is too important. I got to check my ego out of this and just be like, I mean, look at myself and let me look at the people around me…
She also said of performing live:
“I think that — I hope that — what I’ve been told about, like, how this album has — had an effect on people or what it’s done for them, what I’ve been told that it makes me feel so proud and I feel like I really succeeded because I’ve always thought that in, like, putting on — like when you do concerts and stuff, when you do anything in public performance, I always — I don’t feel like I need to address people in the audience and tell them how good looking they are or tell them that — or really, like, shake their hands and I’m not saying that that’s bad, that’s wonderful.
And certain shows are great, like that and people go there to bond with each other and watching music. There are certain types of shows that you want to be able to, like, see the person pointing at you and smiling at you and saying, I see you and I love your outfit and shit and you want to have that experience.
But for shows that I do, the way that I want to do it is I want to actually go through something and forget that everybody’s and just go through something and really just do it for myself because I feel like that’s the kind of show that I get something more out of is when I’m watching something, somebody go through something private and I feel like I’m alone with that person and I’m part of that and I’m going through that, too.
And somehow, that connection works and each person in the audience can have that connection with you and be alone with you if you’re not talking to everybody.”
Watch the performance above, find interview clips below, and revisit our review of Fetch The Bolt Cutters here.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGLxRlsAfBC/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGL_YCoAGxP/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGMFn4nA89d/
