The unhurried artist's first studio album in eight years is astonishing, intimate and demonstrates a refusal to be silenced. The Apple of 2020 is astonishing; as if she has returned to reinvent sound - the rhythms pleasing, but counter, and unusual. On the title track she half-sings over a makeshift orchestra of kitchen implements, dog bark and cat yowl. The beat on 'Under the Table' has a seething back-and-forth pace; the extraordinary 'For Her' beds double Dutch skipping rope rhythms beneath a chorus of female voices. It's striking how intimate Apple's voice sounds here - half-conversational, half-self-mutters, allowing every scuff, breath and feral yelp. She is at her most familiar on 'Ladies', hollering over a soulful backdrop, chewing her own voice like tobacco, then letting it take sweet, sudden flight.
eBay