In what she thought was a good idea, the long-shelved third album by Fiona Apple, Extraordinary Machine, has been completely re-recorded and recently made it onto shelves. This new retail mix is what happens when you take a really good album, wrap up in pathetic beats and wash any originality away. Three cheers for Mike Elizondo.
If you haven’t heard the leaked original album, you might even be impressed with this new one. But if you’re one of the many who have listened to the original, you’ll get to hear your favourite tracks chopped, squeezed, and sterilised.
Gone is the brilliant producer Jon Brion, who is also a long-time collaborator and friend of P.T. Andseron, but I’ll leave that alone. Even then they used two of his tracks to bookend the album – yet still recorded them all over again. What we’re left with is a producer who’s only experience is Hip-Hop, and you’ve got a hodge-podge of music that completely undermines the lyrics, Apple’s vocals, and strangles any real emotion out of her songs.
Essentially what Elizondo’s done with the new mix is to use a hip electronic beat or bass line underneath, nomatter if the song suits it or not. He’s either making music for himself only, or trying to impress somebody. Not the listener, obviously.
The single worst part of it all, is that Apple’s voice this time around sounds like she’s a little beyond the emotion she had for the first recording, and that’s really where the album suffers. The only new song and previously elusive single, Parting Gift at least sounds like it’s from the original recording because of this very reason.
Stephen King was famously asked if he thought lacklustre movie adaptations ruined his books and (to paraphrase), “No,” he said, “they’re just fine up there on the shelf”. Let’s hope some time in the future Brion’s work sees the light of day. 
