My taste in music is generally quite bleepy, but for many years I’ve enjoyed the dulcet tones of Fiona Apple’s two albums, which have now been released in a combined set UK link US link. Her first album, Tidal, has many great tracks on it and shows a voice with great strength and potential. Her unusual style of instrumental arrangment is very distinctive and produces some beautiful riffs that linger in the memory. A slightly more mainstream release of hers was ‘Across the Universe’, which has been described as ‘the best Beatles cover ever recorded’, and can be found on the soundtrack to Pleasentville (which is also a lovely film, and features the Fiona Apple video on the DVD UK link US link).

Anyway, back in 2003 she completed work on an album called ‘Extraordinary Machine’ which was apparently deemed too uncommericial for release. Some say that Miss Apple thought that the album wasn’t really finished, but I suspect that we won’t hear the truth about it. Fast forward to now, the album has been leaked onto P2P networks and a campaign has been running for around a year to get the album released. Finally later this year it will come out with about two-thirds of the tracks re-recorded. I’ve got a copy of the unreleased ablum, and it continues her earlier eccentric sound and puts in a few new twists. It’s definitely worth a listen and I’m looking forward to the official release and to hearing the difference the recording has made.

If you like female singers and fancy trying something a little unusual then give Fiona Apple a try.

Here’s a more formal run-down of the goings on:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/arts/music/15appl.html