Track Listing

1. Sleep To Dream
2. Sullen Girl
3. Shadowboxer
4. Criminal
5. Slow Like Honey
6. First Taste
7. Never Is A Promise
8. Child Is Gone
9. Pale September
10. Carrion

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67620 in Music
• Released on: 2000-04-17
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Tidal is the debut album by Fiona Apple, a New York singer/songwriter/pianist who was 18 years old at the time of its 1996 release. Apple is obviously talented--she has a dark, smoky alto and a knack for an arresting turn of phrase--but she's still several years away from realizing her potential. For every fresh lyric she writes ("Daddy longlegs, I feel that I'm finally growing weary of waiting to be consumed by you"), she provides two examples of embarrassingly precious schoolgirl poetry ("Adagio breezes fill my skin with sudden red," from the same song, "The First Taste"). She also has yet to refine her moody piano chords into actual melodies, though "Shadowboxer" comes close. --Geoffrey Himes

CD Description
Judging from the songs that litter her debut, this 18-year-old singer-songwriter is at odds with every situation in which she finds herself. While exotic beats and luscious pop textures decorate the space around her, Apple takes a defiant stance with everyone she addresses. In song after song, she looks for her "own hell to raise" or "to take flight"; or else she paints herself as a "Shadowboxer" or "Criminal". Overand over, Apple presents herself as a hard-to-please emotional invalid, a societal outcast for whom songwriting is the only release.
Apple masks this confessional writing with simple-but-arty, piano-based melodies that recall Tori Amos.There are also jazzy touches to much of the presentation, which hint she might be a Rickie Lee Jones for an alternativenation. At times, particularly on "Slow Like Honey", which combines her husky, up-close-and-quiet voice with Jon Brion's tasteful vibraphone, a surprisingly subtle, smoky atmosphere develops. But, as with the rest of Apple's presentations,it becomes a dark lounge filled with Alanis-like notions ofsexual politics.

Customer Reviews

Tide comes in
Fiona Apple has become one of those few singer-songwriters who is known for her talent, with only two albums to her name. Her debut "Tidal" is more uneven than her sophomore album, but Apple's rich voice and exquisite musicianship make up for the occasional lyrical stumbles.

"You say love is a hell you cannot bear/And I say gimme mine back and then go there for all I care," Apple sings in the first song, her alto suspended somewhere between a purr and a snarl. Backling her up is her own textured piano playing, backed by a heavy bass lick that pops up every few seconds like a tribal drum.

But unworthy lovers aren't the only topic that Apple tackles here. She also explores personal changes ("And I suddenly feel like a different person/From the roots of my soul come a gentle coercion"), hurting others in love, and "You'll say "don't fear your dreams"/It's easier than it seems."

Her songs are painfully deep in themselves, but it's all the more shocking and stunning when you realize that she was only eighteen when the album was released. Her music exudes the sorrow, anger and emotion of a woman twenty years older, mixed in with the ever-changing personality of a young girl. Music like this can't be calculated; it can only ever be real.

Her youth does show in songs like "Pale Summer," or certain awkward lines like "Oh, your love give me a heart contusion/Adagio breezes fill my skin with sudden red." It sounds a bit too overblown, in a high-school poetry way. But Apple has a rare way with simpler lines, giving them a verbal punch that a shadowboxer couldn't match. "I have never been so insulted in all my life/I could swallow the seas to wash down all this pride!" she snarls in the first song.

But honestly speaking, Apple could sing some really dreadful songs and they would still sound good -- her voice is another thing that was much older than she was, the sort of thing you'd expect to find in a thirtysomething torch singer. Her husky alto carries the songs with a rare intensity, backed with swelling strings and her delicate piano melodies.

There are a few lyrical stumbles in Fiona Apple's debut "Tidal," but it's still a pop masterpiece. Beautiful, intense, heartfelt and heartbreaking.

Apple's just amazin'....
Nice to see a C.D. I bought in 1996 being released for a wider audience, the whole of this album from start to finish is a class act. From the superb singing and piano playing of Ms Apple to the excellent production and playing of the musicians involed, this project comes across as something that the people who worked on it would be proud of.
The angust of the writer is protrayed with elegence and intelligence, as to inform the listener as well show them of her feelings. Fiona Apple may have some strange habits like not eating anythng the colour green, (so I read somewhere)but she shows on her first release that she is very talented and has a huge future, buy this now before the rush it's bound to happen...

richness, depth -- must experience this music
You cannot really describe music without adjectives getting all out of hand. You simply must listen to Fiona Apple.

Let's be straight -- I heard the name, saw the waif approach the mike, and I clicked off the late night TV and went to bed. Next day a friend laid a cassette on me for a long drive. I saw the name again and thought, okay whatever will keep me awake. One of the best things that ever happened to me musically.

Her voice is a rich, deep, incredible instrument. Her music complex, emotive, powerful, lyrical, soulful, mind-wrenching, gut-provoking.... you see what I mean about all these words not really giving it to you. You've just got to do yourself the favor of this musician's music -- get hold of any of it, any way you can.

Oh, and, one last thing must be said: Fiona Apple is incomparable -- critical comparisons to Morissette are unfortunate; like comparing the color pink to the color purple... one could do it, but why?