The 50 best albums of 2020, No 1: Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters
Laura Snapes
Once the dust had settled on the UK lockdown in spring, you started to hear a cautious kind of optimism. Maybe, on the other side of all this, a better world might be possible – less capitalist, kinder and more humane. Until then, there was Fetch the Bolt Cutters.
When Fiona Apple released her fifth album in April, its title quickly became a meme for those feeling suffocated by their own four walls and wanting out. Apple had a different kind of freedom in mind. She had pretty much quit public life years earlier to live in Venice, California, with her housemate and their dogs, mostly leaving the house for walks on the beach at dawn. Isolation gave her the distance to observe the world’s workings and propose something better.