Fiona covered “Jolene” by Dolly Parton on Saturday night (9/24/11) at Largo during her show with Jon Brion. She’s performed this cover before but pretty sure this is the first recording of it ever to surface.
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It’s 1 p.m., and Jon Brion is still in his pajamas and slippers. For the past three months, Brion, Tom Biller, an engineer, and the singer Fiona Apple have been living at the Paramour. Right now, Brion is noodling at a Casio keyboard, playing along to a mix of Apple’s ”Oh Well.” ”I cried the first time I heard her play this,” Brion says. ”We were at Ocean Way, Sinatra’s old studio, and I just put my head down on the table and cried.”
As ”Oh Well” plays repeatedly, Brion tries to conceive an arrangement that won’t disturb the power of Apple’s vocals. He says he thinks her delivery on the current version might be too slow for the anger of the words. To help, Brion has written out the lyrics in color-coded fashion on two giant pieces of white paper. Blue represents sad passages, red anger and green the resignation of Apple’s whispering ”Oh, well” in the last line.
”There’s a space between this line and that line, and it’s this continual sort of push and pull,” Brion says. ”If she’s not singing, I offer something to carry the listener through to the next moment where she returns.”
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Thanks to sharp producer Jon Brion (Rufus Wainwright, Macy Gray), When the Pawn… avoids overstatement. Apple’s piano trundles, the strings loom, the beats clop; everything, including her throaty voice, has alluring dark circles under it. With their hints of cabaret, tango, and doomed chanteuses, the melodies slither rather than pummel you. The very good but imperfect Tidal was hampered by musical and lyrical floridness. When the Pawn… is more consistent, rhythmic, and forceful. From the hell’s-carousel feel of ”On the Bound” to the sputtery single ”Fast as You Can,” which dares radio to stick with its shifting time signatures, Apple and Brion take chances that continually pay off.
— Entertainment Weekly on the 10-year-old masterpiece, When the Pawn…
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Fiona Apple - “Better Version of Me” (Jon Brion version)
this song has been my personal fight song ever since i first heard it. i’ve been doing a tour of the past decade on my iPod and looking back, this album probably hit me the hardest on an emotional level. almost every track could be the soundtrack to my ups and downs of the past 5 years. or as Fiona puts it: “after all the all folderol and hauling over coals stops, what did i learn?/i am likely to miss the main event if i stop to cry and complain again. so i will keep a deliberate pace, let the damn breeze dry my face.”
