Don't miss out. Follow us on Twitter for new music. Don't forget: use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to move between posts quickly and easily.
With the release of Fiona Apple's The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do (breathe) inching closer, the chanteuse has unveiled a second studio track from the album––one of her favorites, we gather––"Werewolf." The track is as bare as they come, moreso than Idler Wheel's wonderful first single "Every Single Night," except for a distinct sample of the sound of schoolchildren playing. Apple really got into how that element made it into the song in an interview with Pitchfork recently, saying:
I wrote that song while staying at my mother's apartment up in Harlem. Whenever there's a TV, I put on [Turner Classic Movies]-- I always have it on, while I sleep, whatever. I was recording myself doing the song for the first time, and a battle broke out in the movie that was playing. People were shooting and screaming. I liked it, but I couldn't use it from the movie, so I spent literally the next year trying to recreate that sound. I went to San Francisco for Halloween and I was hanging out in trollies recording people screaming. I would walk past a bunch of drunk people and be like: "Hey, scream!" But it would always sound wrong and stupid.
But on the first morning we were planning to record, I had just gotten out of the shower and I heard all these kids screaming-- there's an elementary school across from my house in L.A. I was like, "Oh shit, that's it." I threw on whatever was right there-- which I didn't realize at the time was a pair of pants that I was going to throw away because the ass was split-- and I ran out, half-clothed, carrying my recording thing. I was standing there looking like a crazy person, watching these kids. They were jumping with balloons between their legs, trying to make them pop. In the actual song, we had to take out all the balloon pops because they sounded like gunshots. But it was so perfect.
That story is too good for any song, but it's okay –– Fiona Apple's personality and quirky stories have always been half the fun. The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do is out June 19th.
