In 2012, Fiona Apple re-entered the public eye after a seven year absence with The Idler Wheel. It was a powerful return that had the wild heat of a meteor making atmospheric entry. The lead single “Every Single Night” came on all the dying alt-rock radio stations and sounded like nothing else on their playlist. It barely sounded like the old Fiona Apple.

I remember this because one of my co-workers at the time, a man in his sixties who thought himself a bit of a progressive jazz head, hated it. “What happened?” he asked whenever it would come on. Old Fiona Apple was a bluesy singer-songwriter with muscular piano chords and soulful vocal melodies. The Idler Wheel was unconventional. It frequently isolated her voice, but this time with weird winding melodies and made her piano playing almost a garnish. On songs like “Regret” she absolutely wrecked her voice in growls almost like an act of self-flagellation. It was thrilling.

Now after an eight year absence, Fiona Apple returns to us in quarantine with Fetch the Bolt Cutters. It felt good to have this pop up out of nowhere; in these formless, structure-less days, it is good to remember there are indeed events still happening. It is good to remember that there will be things to look back on besides the virus.

Fetch the Bolt Cutters is another new move, though not as jolting as the one she took in 2012. Sonically it has that same wide open room sound that shines with good headphones. Songs like opener “I Want You to Love Me” achieve a fever dream quality through subtle, gnawing sounds mixed into the background. Through these sensations, it feels like a continuation of The Idler Wheel.

But the change in content and emotion is tangible. In an interview about the album with Vulture, Apple says the following about “Cosmonaut,” one of the best songs on the album:

“I did have hope when I was writing that song, and honestly, there’s absolutely hope that I could find a relationship. But I don’t really want to. I really just don’t want to. I like my life how it is, and I don’t feel very romantic these days.”

The lack of romance is apparent throughout the album. The Idler Wheel’s emotional core was the anguish and stakes of relationships: of finding them, burning them and burying them. In its absence, she refocuses her passion on other avenues: trauma, nostalgia, anecdotes, and complicated letters to other women. “For Her” is one of the most challenging songs she’s ever presented to us, exploring another woman’s account of rape, the culture that enables it, and catharsis about her own experience. Calling it dense doesn’t do it justice. It goes from an almost spoken-word cadence into stomp-and-clap Americana and evaporates into an angry hymnal. I can’t even begin to imagine how a song of this nature is conceptualized.

On “Newspaper,” Apple sings like she’s casting a hex. The dissonant rhythm is like a junkyard percussion section, and helps underscore the mess implied in lines like: “I grew concerned when I saw him start to covet you / When I learned what he did, I felt close to you.” Nothing here makes for an elegant design.

This kind of attention to detail is felt all over the album. Nothing is familiar for very long, and you can never finish its sentences upon first spin. It’s odd, new, and enthralling.

What I loved about The Idler Wheel in 2012 was the raw emotion bursting at the seams. While Fetch the Bolt Cutters is undeniably emotional, it’s less concerned with romance and that felt, initially, less cathartic to me. But in all honesty the stakes of romance seem quaint compared to the shit that’s being worked through here. It seems silly to want, after a career of some of the best break up songs of all time, to hear a new break up song.

Still, I remember the first time I heard “Regret” from The Idler Wheel. I was driving to work and as the dread and romance unfurled, it felt like a moment. Not just a “that’s a good song” moment, which Bolt Cutters has its fair share of, but a “I have to stop everything” moment.

The obvious answer to this impression is to point out that this is a very male perspective and reading of the new album. It’s not that these themes don’t touch people like me, but I have the privilege of not having to think about things like the pervasive culture of sexual assault very frequently. It only makes sense that a song about it would hit different than a love song.

It’s just as fine if not everything appeals to me and my experience. I think back to my co-worker who couldn’t understand the decision to sing in harsh, manic melodies on “Every Single Night.” What I would hope people would see is the potential for those “stop everything” moments, even if for other people. Even if I appreciate it with a different part of my brain, the music speaks for itself: it is full of show stoppers, day stoppers, life stoppers.