“Warnings” is a Major Breakthrough for I Break Horses

While recently writing my albums of the decade list, my mind started connecting the dots between the records I enjoyed the most in the last ten years. A common link between many was that they sounded ambitious and vast, yet still maintained a sense of personality and intimacy. Albums like Tamaryn’s The Waves, Angel Olsen’s All Mirrors, and Bjork’s Vulnicura were three just from the top ten that came to mind as fitting into this framework. They all succeeded at scratching the itch I have for big, dramatic sounds, but also my desire to hear music that reflects an individual with distinct charisma, which tends to be my primary focus in the medium.

Warnings, the latest album by I Break Horses (the recording project of Swedish singer/songwriter Maria Linden), is a strong entrant into this class of album. Its release comes after a six-year hiatus since 2014’s Chiaroscuro; in the last year, I had coincidentally been revisiting her earlier music and wondering what happened to her, assuming the project had just ended without much fanfare. Her 2011 debut, Hearts, was the archetypical early 2010s electronic dream pop album that was very listenable, glossy, and chill, but didn’t have enough personality or originality to be more than a collection of solidly crafted, kind of forgettable pop songs. Warnings is a much more ambitious release that also feels personal and distinct, which is what makes it such a satisfying breakthrough.

The difference in Linden’s approach is obvious from the first song, “Turn,” which dispenses with typical pop lengths and breathes freely over the course of nine minutes, which are built around a repeated arpeggio and dense rhythms. The lyrics describe a tumultuous relationship that changes over time, so the song has a reason to go this long as it conveys her shifting emotions. The words don’t exactly jump off the page if you just read them, but they’re elevated by the whole sumptuous atmosphere the song creates, as well as Linden’s voice, which remains the biggest strength of her work. Beyond just the subjective “she sounds great” aspect, there is a sincerity in her delivery, and she can range from delivering soaring choruses to the quiet parts of this song that give it a sense of solitude and intimacy.

The release of Warnings was prefaced by a stellar run of singles that guaranteed I was going to love this album way more than anyone else who wastes time writing about music. “Death Engine” is in a similar vein to “Turn,” in that it uses length and space to tell a dramatic story about suicide and loss. “I’ll Be the Death of You,” “Neon Lights,” and “The Prophet” are pop songs from Linden’s old playbook, with earworm melodies, smooth production, and more straight-forward lyrics about relationships. But even those more traditional songs show further self-assuredness with her craft. They all take their time and the focus continues to be more on Linden expressing herself with her voice than just on cultivating a cool aesthetic. The album also sprinkles in some short ambient mood pieces, which help break up the pop songs while showing different sides of Linden’s creativity. The only real misfire on the album is the last track, “Depression Tourist,” and even that has less to do with the craft and more to do with me being a cranky music boomer about autotune. I will never understand why someone who has talent like Linden’s would mangle their voice with that sort of gimmickry, and it feels out of step with the rest of the album’s organic, soulful vibe.

That’s a small complaint when the rest of the album gives the listener so much, and it’s also a natural side effect of the ambition that makes the other songs so memorable. When announcing her new album after such a long break, Linden vowed that she wanted “to create the most intimate and sincere songs I felt I had in me.” Warnings delivers on that promise, and she didn’t have to trade off any of what made her previous music so appealing to get there. This album’s sound and its depth are on a different level, and few recent albums have had this combination of evocative singing and songwriting with addictive pop hooks.

Midwife’s “Forever” is a Nuanced Depiction of Grief

Madeline Johnston, who records as Midwife, has come up with a great name for her genre of music: “heaven metal.” Her second album, Forever, has the noise of metal with songs built around heavy guitar, but it trades in that genre’s usual aggressiveness for calming repetition. The result is a gloomy, immersive atmosphere that is reminiscent of some of Emma Ruth Rundle’s work, though this music is less focused on hooks. Instead, Johnston makes these songs into formless voids that are dark, emotive, and also weirdly peaceful. It’s relaxing to let everything go and let this album’s sound wash over you.

Johnston muffles her voice in the guitar, almost sounding like she’s patching into the songs from a radio. The lyrics are simple and repetitive, matching the droning guitar parts, and they’re focused on loss after a friend of hers, Colin Ward (who is heard reading a poem on the album’s fifth track track, “C.F.R.W.”), passed away. That lends the songs an underlying purpose and feeling that helps keep it engaging, unlike some other drone albums that can be difficult to connect with if it just feels like the artist is experimenting with sounds for the sake of it.

Forever only has six songs, but each are their own distinct, haunting reflections on grief. Opener “2018” captures the initial shock and anger, with its only lyrics being “this is really happening to me” and “get the fuck away from me, 2018.” The closest the album has to a single is “Anyone Can Play Guitar,” which has a gentle melody that blends in with Johnston’s reverbed guitar. “Vow” and “Language” bring the volume down to nearly a whisper, using space and spare droning notes to create a feeling of vast emptiness. Ward’s poem jars the listener out of that lull at the start of “C.F.R.W.” which is followed by four minutes of reflective ambient sound that lets his death settle in. That transitions into the closer, “S.W.I.M.,” which returns to the heaven metal sound with the loud guitars and shoegaze-inspired riffs. Johnston sings her most straight-forward, heartbreaking lyrics on that song, conveying her struggle to move on: “I don’t want to swim forever, treading water my whole life.”

It is grim material, and Johnston portrays it unflinchingly, using both her words and the sound to convey her grief directly while also retaining ambiguity that will allow listeners to connect with these songs in their own way. As heavy as the subject matter and sound is at times, there is an undercurrent of resolve and strength in her noisy guitar parts, which help the album avoid feeling like it’s just hitting you over the head with sadness. Forever gives the listener a lot more than that; it’s a nuanced, heartfelt recording that belongs to its own genre and does justice to her friend’s memory.

“Fetch the Bolt Cutters” is Fiona Apple in Peak Form

It’s nice that we can all agree. Fiona Apple’s new album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is receiving nearly unprecedented critical praise, and deservedly so. If you’re like me and think of music primarily as a vehicle for personalities and charisma, it is hard for anything to top this. Every song on this album is one that only Fiona Apple could have made, with words that only she would say. The level of detail and specificity in these songs makes the album transcend the idea of confessional songwriting: this isn’t just a little window into Apple’s world, it is her world, and anyone who listens is living in it for its entire duration.

That’s an underrated and increasingly rare trait in art — the idea of the work as a way to deepen your understanding of other people. A lot of Apple’s lyrics on Fetch the Bolt Cutters deal with uncomfortable subjects of abuse and gaslighting at the hands of men, especially the way they impacted her mindset and her friendships with other women. The most jarring moment, on “For Her,” comes after a couple minutes of a fun-sounding ditty when the song stops and Apple matter-of-factly states “Good morning. You raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in.” It’s a far cry from “Sullen Girl” from Tidal, which couched its story of rape in a metaphor about a man taking her pearl and leaving a shell. Now, Apple is comfortable just saying the truth and embracing the harshness of it. On “Newspaper,” she describes a previous partner who caught her up in “his big show” and then began seeing another woman, who Apple felt an unspoken bond with. “I wonder what lies he’s telling you about me to make sure we can never be friends,” she muses, backed by a variety of percussion and backing vocals. “You and I won’t get a witness,” she adds. “We’re the only ones who will ever know.”

But now, through these songs, people will know a little bit, even if they don’t have the specifics. As a man, I realize it looks weird that I’m almost always celebrating the work of women, but part of it is how much I value this aspect of art. I can try to live with empathy and do my best to understand other people with different experiences, but I can’t really know. Albums like Apple’s are the closest you can get to walking in another person’s shoes because of the blunt, vivid truths in her lyrics and the authenticity of her performance. That’s a gift that shouldn’t be taken lightly, and albums like this are why I listen to music.

The lyrics get so much of the attention, but the sound is just as big a part of this. I’ve written a decent amount about The Shaggs, who were untrained sisters who possessed little knowledge or training in music, yet still recorded an album at the behest of their father, which ended up becoming a cult classic. My argument in favor of them was that, while their music sounded unpleasant, there was a pureness and authenticity to it that is almost never heard, because it was made with no desire to impress and contained no references to other music. Fetch the Bolt Cutters is about the closest a trained, talented musician has come to capturing that magic. In every element of these songs, Apple is breaking down the barriers of pretension and performance, until all that’s left is just her voice, her stories and the truth.

The instrumentation is heavily focused on rhythms, with Apple’s familiar piano playing a part along with miscellaneous percussion (which I suspect is just from things lying around her house) and drumming from her friend, Amy Aileen Wood. “Mistakes” are left in the recording, most notably dogs barking in the background (five are credited on the album with “backing barks,” “collar jangles,” and “thrashing”). In the closing track, “On I Go,” Apple can be heard saying “oh fuck, shit!” after presumably screwing up a take. Leaving these in is just another way Fetch the Bolt Cutters reduces the distance between itself and the listener, which, along with the emotional, biographical lyrics, gives it an unparalleled level of intimacy. When I listen to this album, I feel like I know exactly who Fiona Apple is.

Out of all those traits of hers that come through so clearly on Fetch the Boltcutters, my favorite is her intolerance for bullshit, which was made famous in her speech at the 1997 VMAs. It not only makes her likable, but it adds to her work, which benefits from not having slick production, trendy sounds, or any of the other factors that are often associated with quality but make it difficult for listeners to connect with music in a deep way. This is a sophisticated album that was likely obsessed over for a long time, as all of hers are, yet it feels raw and spontaneous because of its loose structure and homemade production, which adds to the visceral power of the lyrics. Apple’s voice is a major part of this, as she almost scat-sings through a lot of the album rather than singing show-offy notes. Her singing feels utilitarian, like all she wants to do is get the truth out as quickly as possible instead of being weighed down by the usual performative flourishes. She has mastered the art of making such effortful music feel organic and achingly real –only an album with this many imperfections could sound so perfect.