819. Fiona Apple - Tidal (1996)

Track Listing

1. Sleep To Dream
2. Sullen Girl
3. Shadowboxer
4. Criminal
5. Slow Like Honey
6. The First Taste
7. Never Is A Promise
8. The Child Is Gone
9. Pale September
10. Carrion

Review

Some albums require to be listened to at the right point in your life to make sense, this was the case with me and this album. At the time I heard it I was in a relationship where I was pretty much the bitch, and Fiona's adolescent lyrics rang true. Actually the person who introduced me to Fiona ended up becoming my wife, at the time she was only a friend who I turned to in the never ending break-ups and get-back-togethers I was involved in.

Moving myself away from my adolescent self and looking at the album objectively there are things which now grate. The lyric writing is at times downright poor, but Fiona was very young at the time, and she should be forgiven. The album is now worth it, however, for its very good arrangements and Fiona's capacity to interpret her songs perfectly.

Fiona's voice and inflections are the best thing about the album, she manages to infuse some lyrics with the emotion that is lacking in the song-writing. It is in the voice that the emotion is shown, the songs themselves are pretty good musically, and the arrangements are always surprising. So a good album, and an autobiographical one.

Track Highlights

1. First Taste
2. Criminal
3. Sleep To Dream
4. Slow Like Honey

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Tidal produced six singles: "Shadowboxer", "Slow Like Honey", "Sleep to Dream", "The First Taste", "Criminal" and "Never Is a Promise". "Criminal", the album's most popular single, won a 1998 Grammy Award for "Best Female Rock Vocal Performance" and was named the single of 1997 in a poll of Rolling Stone readers. The music video for "The First Taste" never aired in the U.S.

So never aired in the States and she needs a Samwhich, First Taste: