Music

By any measure, fans of American singer-songwriter Fiona Apple are extraordinarily committed. Not in the freakily obsessive sense, as you might imagine, but because this album would simply never have seen the light of day had it not been for their doughty determination and inspired proactivity.

Ms Apple – she of the green ‘Village Of The Damned’ eyes – made her debut in 1996 aged 19, with ‘Tidal’. It was a precocious entrance, showcasing her moody alto, pop-jazz-toned piano chops and the idiosyncratic, coffee-house confessionalism of her lyrics, which focused on heartache and childhood pain, including her own experience of rape. The follow-up in 1999 further cemented Apple’s reputation as a kind of troubled, post-grunge Tori Amos for teens, an image reinforced by her baffling vocal outbursts and occasional onstage crying jags, which resulted in almost a decade spent on anti-anxiety medication.

‘Extraordinary Machine’ was initially leaked onto the internet in unfinished form, produced by Jon Brion. Apple’s record company had already decided against releasing it, frightened off by its adventurism and lack of obvious hits. True, an interpretive mix of the works of Steven Sondheim, Randy Newman, Gilbert and Sullivan, Marlene Dietrich and Rufus Wainwright might not accord with popular taste, but there’s nothing arch, showy or at all histrionic about this striking batch of tunes. Apple’s fans clearly agreed; when they got wind of the fact that Epic/Sony had shelved plans to release the LP, they urged everyone – via the www.freefiona.com website – to deluge its NYC headquarters with apple-themed letters and packages. This organised bombardment worked and ‘Extraordinary Machine’ was finally released – in finished form, with hip-hop producer Mike Elizondo at the helm – in the USA last October, debuting at Number Seven in the charts. As triumphant fingers to The Man go, that’s pretty hard to beat.