After an absence of seven years Fiona Apple returns this week with her latest album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. It has been receiving strong notices, and Genevieve Koski at the AV Club gives a tantalising impression:

‘These ideas of mine/percolate the mind/trickle down my spine/swarm the belly/swelling to a blaze.’ So sings Fiona Apple on ‘Every Single Night’, the opening track and first official single from her first album in seven years, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than The Driver Of The Screw And Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do. It’s a typical bit of Apple poetry, evocative yet blunt, and inherently wrapped up in the singer’s own unwaveringly awkward state of being. It also serves as a nice distillation of her modus operandi: Apple’s records are products of necessity, both creative and physical.