The beautiful album to get lost in by Fiona Apple
Success embraces Fiona Apple making his debut at the age of eighteen with the album “Tidal” dated July 1996. The New York musician was therefore waiting for the second album to confirm her good qualities. On November 9, 1999, 25 years ago, Fiona published “When the pawn…” and confirmed herself as a very talented singer-songwriter. Here is our review written a quarter of a century ago.
The original – and complete – title would be “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 beat 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”, i.e. a poem written by Fiona herself and candidly proposed for the name of the album. In fact, Sony itself only wrote “When the pawn” on the disc, without even the ellipses, from the series «Nice idea, the long title, Fiona, very artistic, of course, but now let us work…».
The album, fortunately, is much more immediate and comfortable than that title, and highlights, compared to “Tidal”, almost unexpected progress. If that, in the chaos of compliments rained down on him by the press all over the world, in the end it still turned out to be an almost ‘pubescent’ album for some themes and for the overall mood, also giving rise to the suspicion that we were sticking to the Morissette train that shocked the scene with its passage more or less in the same period, “When the pawn” is a ripe fruit, which illustrates Fiona Apple’s musical world in great detail.
Not that it is a world light years away from the one professed by the piano or guitar chords of Alanis or Tori – or, taking a leap back, from the glittering stars of Carole King and Joni Mitchell – but everything is colored by very original and heard, and from a different conviction. The girl smiling on the cover seems not to worry about the thoughts that troubled the still minor gaze immortalized on “Tidal”, in that shot too similar to an advertisement for a women’s magazine to be convincing about the honesty of the product. Time has passed to demonstrate that what germinated on that album has managed to blossom on this one, including some fascinating swing implications complete with a string section.
It’s difficult to point out anything in particular, even if the initial “On the bound” deserves applause, as do “Love ridden” and “Fast as you can”, with a start worthy of Chick Corea in his Spanish forays. But overall “When the pawn” is a nice album to get lost in.
