The Long-Lost Fiona Apple Album

Posted on August 17, 2005

Finally, after six years, fans will finally hear the new album of singer-songwriter Fiona Apple. Her third album, Extraordinary Machine, will be released on on October 4th, 2005. Rolling Stone reports:

"Now that my album is finally finished, I am very, very excited to have people hear what we did," Apple said in a statement. "I am so proud of it, and all of us who worked on it."
Apple began recording the follow-up to 1999's When the Pawn with producer Jon Brion (Aimee Mann, Kanye West) in a Los Angeles studio in 2003. After When the Pawn, Apple took a two-year hiatus, during which she spent time with family and friends, read, worked on her visual art, rode around on her bike and listened to very little music. Finally, she told Rolling Stone in 2003, "I started to get the itch." Sessions with Brion and drummer Matt Chamberlain led to the bulk of the Extraordinary tracks, which the singer-songwriter described at the time as "all over the place." "But I'm too close to the songs," she added. "You'll just have to decide for yourself."
Though eleven songs from Extraordinary surfaced online, Apple stayed mum and continued work on the set with producers Mike Elizondo (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg) and Brian Kehew (Beck, Eels). The twelve-track CD will include a brand new song, "Parting Gift," as well as re-recorded versions of nine of the songs previously leaked online.

Apple's record label, Epic, has redesigned her website where fans can listen to two songs from the album, "Parting Gift" and "O' Sailor." It will be interesting to see how fans like the album after the songs have been re-tooled. The Dave Matthews band got lots of complaints from fans who liked the earlier, raw versions of the songs that were first leaked on illegal file-sharing sites. Everyone's a critic.