Apple. (Courtesy Susan Goldman/AFP/Getty Images)

Fiona Apple is not a girl. Come to think of it, she never was.

In our present cultural moment—when, out of opposite corners of YouTube, the two indomitable pop breakouts of the year are a quasi-teenager (Carly Rae Jepsen) discovered by Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez and a real teenager (Kitty Pryde) who raps about marrying Justin Bieber (and running over Selena, twice); when the one popularly unassailable part of Obamacare is the provision that allows keeping offspring medical dependents till age 26—that may be the most incongruous thing about her.

To be sure, the key to Fiona Apple, who plays the Governors Ball festival on Randall’s Island on June 24, will always be petulance. “This world is shit,” she told the world, after it gave her an MTV award now nearly half her lifetime ago. But, in hindsight, her petulance was—and is—closer to the operatic self-regard of, say, Anna Wintour or Bill Clinton than to the junior high narcissism, the Disney Channel insecurity, of all the Carlys and Mileys and Amys (to say nothing of the Justins) who have intervened since her brief reign on top of the charts.

She will always be the rail-thin, panty-clad 19-year-old slinking around the “Criminal” video, crooning “I’ve been a bad, bad girl” with preternatural husk. That was 1997. (Making Ms. Apple a still shockingly young 34, or closer in age to Britney Spears than to Alanis Morrisette.) But pop historians would be wise to keep her seminal come-on—or, rather, put-on—in perspective. This wasn’t a fallen girl, ruing the day she let boys and stardom and the Devil waylay her virginity, or seduce her into rehab. This wasn’t, like so much top-40 confessional then and now, a matter of cataloging the artist’s constitutional weaknesses; it was an acknowledgement of her own capacity, and taste, for malice aforethought.

Why a bad girl? Because she’d “been careless with a delicate man.” Why a sad world? Because “a girl would break a boy just because she can.” Watching HBO’s Girls—mechanically entranced, unable to evaluate the show on its merits or turn away for fear of missing the zeitgeist and dying alone—one can’t help but want to reach through the screen and knock a bit of “Criminal” free will into voice-of-her-generation Lena Dunham. (To say nothing of Lana Del Rey, today’s Fiona-aping naïf.)

Not that Fiona Apple’s ever been interested in anything so vulgar as empowerment.

Her debut Tidal (1996) was swept into the Lilith Fair wave; she played that acoustic-feminist festival (once), but wasn’t of it. We might say she failed the movement’s categorical imperative: Jewel, Sheryl Crow, Sarah McLachlan, even Erykah Badu and the Indigo Girls, were each reasonably universal models for modern womynhood and post-grrrl self-actualization. But neither genius nor madness has much truck with solidarity. If any half of the population wakes up one day and starts behaving and thinking like Fiona Apple, civilization would implode by noon. By pedigree—Upper West Side, musical theater, piano lessons—she actually recalls this era’s arch-self-helpist; indeed, when recordings surfaced in 2009 of the former Stefani Germanotta’s snoozy singer-songwriter days at NYU, simpletons threw around the phrase “Fiona Apple-type ballads,” pejoratively.

But Lady Gaga’s great crime isn’t “inauthenticity,” a Lilith-style square turned electropop freak in a craven bid for popularity. (As if someone could actually be born that way). Her fatal mistake was, rather, populism: Offering her performance-art metamorphosis as an emancipatory path open to every mildly oppressed, minutely talented girl and boy in glee club, Ms. Germanotta scripted her own obsolescence. In these days of participatory fandom, when stars seem compelled to demystify themselves 140 characters at a time, who can really pull off the aloof danger, the demigod caprice, that was the true mark of David Bowies and Graces Joneses past? Having domesticated her quirks and her traumas to adolescent archetype—having insisted on being special just like us—Gaga fates herself to spending years and millions never quite recreating her early outré magic. Meanwhile, after a six-year hiatus Fiona Apple last week reappeared in a video for “Every Single Night” wearing, for a few seconds anyway, an octopus on her head. Totally inexplicable, those seconds remain as unnerving and truly weird on repeated viewings as all five minutes of “Bad Romance” seemed at first blush.

Which is to say, empowerment, like enfranchisement, presupposes a lack. Even on Tidal, which had a few tired Lady Gaga-type ballads among the gems, Fiona Apple took her own peculiar power as given. That at the time this power was manifest most obviously in sex—“I decided if I was going to be exploited, then I would do the exploiting myself,” she said of the jailbait “Criminal” clip—would set in motion 15 years of misinterpretation. The error is basic. Not least among her greatest supporters, the tendency remains to read Fiona Apple precisely through the lens of a certain all-consuming psychic girlhood, what we might define as the condition (diagnosable in every age and gender) of a semiformed chrysalis desperately seeking agency. Thus, her ironic melancholy is taken for morbid sullenness; her ambivalence and intransigence, for others’ coercion; her literary intent, for literal comment.

Produced by the film scorer Jon Brion, When the Pawn … (1999) was nothing if not fully formed, a perfectly sequenced chamber-pop spectacle devoid of filler. It was also insanely funny, provided you were willing to drop the notion of Fiona Apple as sullen girl above all else. No one was, and so that album’s full title—90 words in doggerel verse—became a folly of self-seriousness to be indulged rather than the self-mocking, throwaway joke it was. Ms. Apple was still sad, mad, and deeply petulant on When the Pawn … but anyone who dismissed (or celebrated) her as a raw, stream-of-diary-entry songwriter simply wasn’t paying attention. Over Mr. Brion’s baroque instrumentation, she laid rococo lyrics dripping with whimsy: “My derring-do allows me to / dance the rigadoon around you” or “If you wanna make sense / What you looking at me for / I’m no good at math.” But in the darker recesses of the Internet, it was an out-of-context fragment ripped from the archly beautiful breakup number “Paper Bag” that became enshrined as the line of the album. By all accounts, “hunger hurts, but starving works” remains the battle-cry of whatever “pro-ana” forces are left; who would doubt Fiona Apple as the patron saint of anorexia nervosa, that hallmark of young female psychological fragility that conveniently lets everyone else moralize about young female bodies?

(These days, Ms. Apple looks even gaunter, but also age-appropriately womanly, with skyscraping cheekbones. Perhaps she always was, as she always protested, just skinny—the way various delicate men are allowed to be without attracting self-righteous comment.)

By early 2005, the world hadn’t heard from Fiona Apple in four years. That those years coincided with the Spears/Timberlake bubblegum peak merely primed us further for the inevitable interpretation. Hers couldn’t be the absence of a wizened misanthrope or obsessive perfectionist; this was a damsel under duress! So began the Extraordinary Machine affair. Ms. Apple, we learned, had re-entered the studio with Mr. Brion in 2002. The resulting follow-up was essentially complete in April 2003, but the record-label patriarchs were shelving it for lack of commercial appeal. Against Sony/Epic fans organized a “Free Fiona” campaign. Here, finally, was Fiona Apple as Rapunzel, her paucity of musical output equated with a lack of bodily autonomy. In March 2005, the entire album leaked online—incredibly polished for a bootleg, and also incredibly good, period.

It may take a congressional inquiry or at least a few Freedom of Information Act requests to get the whole story, but it now appears Fiona Apple was as much behind the delay of the third Fiona Apple album as any Sony suit. Given how magisterially brilliant the leaked record was—tracks like “Not About Love” and “Red, Red, Red” brought the orchestral drama of When the Pawn … to a new plane—this was difficult to believe at the time. Stranger still was her decision to completely re-record and re-sequence Extraordinary Machine for official release. Its new producer was Mike Elizondo, best known for work with Dr. Dre and Eminem; with some strings pulled out and electronics brought in, the result was murkier and more bass-heavy than the Brion version, but hardly radio friendly or different enough to make one forget the superior bootleg. (Mr. Brion found work in 2005 helming Late Registration, by avowed Fiona-fan Kanye West.)

Another seven years on, and Extraordinary Machine finally makes sense. Released on Tuesday by Epic (without incident), The Idler Wheel … marks out its predecessor—the one that actually made it on sale—as a classic transition album. The 23 words in its full title aside, Wheel … completes the de-Brionization of Fiona Apple. This isn’t an obviously auspicious move. After all, it was Mr. Brion’s carnivalesque maximalism that brought both the humor and the pathos of her songwriting to its mature form. But one now suspects that Ms. Apple already recognized in 2005 (or 2003) that the idiom risked being a dead end, and she risked becoming just the lead instrument on quirky soundtracks for nonexistent indie films. Indeed, if the Extraordinary Machine bootleg was a terrific Fiona Apple album, it was a career-defining Jon Brion one.

Co-produced with the percussionist Charley Drayton, The Idler Wheel … drops the strings, the horns, the pretty symphonic melodies. Recorded factory noises supplement Mr. Drayton’s array of organic beats. Ms. Apple’s keyboards remain, of course, but here you’re reminded pianos are as much percussion as anything else—hammers striking metal. Above all, it’s her voice that fills the vacated space, stretching, straining, simmering, seething. Phonology replaces phonographs. There’s always been a latent hip-hop element to Fiona Apple, and the new album finds her a lyricist as interested in the materiality of words—their physical, voice-box (or beat-box) production—as in their meaning.  

She has her favorites. “I am the baby of the family, it happens, so / Everybody cares and wears the sheep’s clothes while they chaperone,” she sang on the sly, twinkly Extraordinary Machine title track. The closest “Daredevil” on Wheel … has to a chorus is a multitracked Ms. Apple rumbling, “But don’t let me / Ru-in me / I may need a chap-er-one.” Each repeat of those last three syllables brings more relish. “Seek me out,” she taunts in the same song, “Look at, look at, look at me / I’m all the fishes in the sea.”

The effect is stark, and startling—petulance with a devastatingly adult punch.

Elsewhere, “Left Alone” is a moody free-jazz freak-out that wonders, “How can I ask anyone to love me / When all I do is beg to be left alone?” “Every Single Night” fills in the hypnagogic details the 19-year-old Fiona left out when she declared that she didn’t go to sleep to dream: “Every single night / I endure the flight / Of little wings of white-flamed / Butterflies in my brain.”

The Idle Wheel … might be called relentlessly experimental if it weren’t so alarmingly, alluringly immediate. Indeed, the woman who wrote “Criminal” in 45 minutes retains the knack for a pop hook, whatever her more protective fans may think. With its roiling repetition and tribal drums, album-closer “Hot Knife”—“I’m a hot knife / he’s a pat of butter …”—could easily be repurposed as a club hit; I thought immediately of Beyoncé’s “Girls.”

Fiona Apple may not be one, but a decade and a half into a bizarre career, it’s still her world.

editorial@observer.com

Fiona Apple (Getty Images)

In advance of Fiona Apple's new album--her first since 2005, and bearing a characteristically unwieldy title--the singer has released a new single. It's called "Every Single Night," and with its twee plinkiness and scatty, anxious vocals, it's no huge departure, which is precisely what any fan of Ms. Apple would hope for.

On Monday night, the New York premiere of The Extra Man began with a man standing in front of the audience and letting out a rolling, throaty yodel that sounded like a cross between a sea otter and an exotic bird. 

This happened shortly after Shari Springer Berman, the co-director of the film, welcomed actors Kevin Kline and Paul Dano to the front of the theater on Second Avenue in the East Village. Katie Holmes was there, too, but didn't come up to the stage. Then Ms. Springer Berman introduced Jonathan Ames, the author on whose 1998 novel the film is based. "Jonathan, would you like to do your ritual?" she asked. Mr. Ames took the mike.

"To clear the air before the film is shown, I'm just going to make a sound for you," he said. "I always make it at the end of my readings or performances. It's a sound my friends and I would make on the playground when being attacked by more normal children, known as the Hair Call. I won't use the mike."

Mr. Ames, dressed in a black blazer, blue tie and a gray newspaper-boy cap, put down the mike and extended his arms into an opera stance-left arm reaching into the air, the right close to the chest-and opened his mouth wide. "Eeeeeeeeeee!"

Stephanie Pratt, a star of MTV's The Hills, looked confused but smiled. Sean Lennon did not.

"Eeeeeeeeee!"

Fashion writer Derek Blasberg looked up from his BlackBerry.

"EEEEEEEEEE!"

At the after-party, Mr. Dano described Mr. Ames: "He's a unique fellow. He's incredibly funny. At times strange. Lovely guy, though."

The Extra Man is the story of a young man (Mr. Dano) who moves to New York to be a writer and rents a room from an "Extra Man" (Mr. Kline), an escort for the wealthy widows of New York society. Mr. Dano and Mr. Ames live within one block of each other in Brooklyn and were able to meet up and talk about the script as Mr. Dano prepared for the character-a sensitive, bumbling young man who experiments with cross-dressing.

"The character is not actually Jonathan; it's a fictionalized version of stuff he went through, so I just wanted to do what I felt the writing inspired me to do," said Mr. Dano. "But I was definitely able to take things away from hanging out with him"-such as the gray cap that Mr. Dano wears throughout the film.

"They're all perfect," Mr. Ames said of the actors chosen to play the characters he invented. Ms. Holmes skipped the after-party but told reporters earlier that the role was "fun" and "interesting." Mr. Ames called Ms. Holmes "very pleasant." "We met a few times. She was very sweet to me," he said. "All of my life is confusing, so all these experiences are odd to me." 

In the movie, Mr. Ames has a cameo. "In the way that Charles Bukowski could briefly be seen in Barfly, I'm seen in a tranny bar," he said. 

Mr. Ames, who has been primarily a writer and performer (in Oedipussy, his one-man show, and as a boxer), has more recently become an HBO program creator and writer (Bored to Death) and one of those lucky authors whose books have begun to garner interest in Hollywood. (Two more of his books are currently in production or being adapted.)

Does he still have time to write novels?

"Working on the TV show is like writing a novel. It's like chapters, so I do a lot of writing that way," he said. "But I'm not doing much prose writing at the moment. Someday, again, maybe."

The Transom asked if he was still dating singer Fiona Apple. 

"Uh, probably, yes," he said.   

Probably?

"No, no, don't put probably. Just say yes." 

The first time I saw baby-faced singer Maude Maggart in a New York club, she reminded me of one of those turn-of-the-century milkmaids you see in antique shops on lavender-colored boxes of Louis Sherry bonbons. She wore granny gowns and sang dated tunes in a colorless voice as sweet as boysenberry syrup. She’s much better now, but she still has a lot to learn, and I’ve got a big question to ask. Mystery of the spheres: How does a sapling like this get a six-week engagement at the Algonquin’s august Oak Room when far superior performers can’t even get six days? Somebody has a lot of explaining to do.

All of which might mistakenly sound like I’m complaining. Not true. Rest assured, she’s pleasant, like a tween who wins on American Idol. She’s improved since the last time out, and so has some of her repertoire. She’s discovered a new power that wasn’t there before, and she’s doing less Tweety Pie chirping while exploring the warm vibrato in her lower register more. She’s tastefully gowned with a grown-up off-the-shoulder black velvet bodice. But her hair is still combed back and falling down below her shoulders in a long, straight ponytail. She’s Margaret O’Brien with cleavage.

Everything about this new show is a study in contrasts and contradictions. One minute she’s singing Sondheim. The next minute she’s into Dolly Parton. As a fledgling with talent, she lacks direction and focus, and she’s living proof that it’s not enough to love every kind of song ever written. I like eclectic, but any show that ranges from George and Ira Gershwin’s torchy “The Man I Love,” which she turns into a youthful tone poem by a longing daydreamer, to a childlike rumination like “My Grandmother’s Love Letters,” about things found in an attic trunk—well, you can hardly call the repertoire selective. Too many time-wasters to suit me.

And too much candid patter the audience didn’t quite fathom, about a childhood moving back and forth between two divorced parents on opposite coasts who met in the cast of Applause; a grandmother who danced in George White’s Scandals; and a grandfather who played reeds with the Harry James band. Still, I often find myself asking, “Why don’t these young ladies just sing pretty songs, simply and straight from the heart?” And for the most part that’s exactly what she does. Her deeply felt arrangement of “Be a Child” by the underrated genius Alec Wilder, with gorgeous phrases by cellist Yair Evnine, is a highlight. I give her high marks for even knowing who Alec Wilder is. (I’d love to hear what she does with his “Blackberry Winter.”) Her rueful approach to “Our Love Is Here to Stay” was full of measured emotion, treating Ira Gershwin’s lyrics as a eulogy for his brother George. Finally, I was surprised and delighted when she chose Irving Berlin’s seldom-heard “Moonshine Lullaby,” the rarest song from the fertile score of Annie Get Your Gun, as her encore. She has taste.

Maude Maggart has been listening, stretching and growing as an artist. As she examines the contours of her songs, she transports herself into a dreamlike state—mesmerizing but too often punctuated by girlish giggles. She’s hard to peg. She’s too cool and self-assured to be labeled a conventional pop star like her sister, Fiona Apple, but not sophisticated or worldly enough to be crowned a cabaret diva in the tradition of Mabel Mercer and Julie Wilson. I think she has the goods to dazzle, but for now, she only manages a small glow.

rreed@observer.com

The gathering was in honor of "Flash Fiction," a public art project of sorts in which 10 short stories—commissioned from authors such as Jonathan Ames, Colum McCann, Sloane Crosley, Jonathan Lethem, and Jay McInerney—were screened on the side of the building. Downstairs, there was a pseudo red carpet in the lobby with photographers snapping photos of arriving guests. Upstairs, Beatrice Inn DJ Matt Creed (former beau of Kirsten Dunst) was spinning Joy Division for the guests.

"I'm your dog. No one else can hear you sing," read a passage by Mr. McInerney. Bow-wow! It was displayed alongside a Diesel ad in which a blind-folded model with disheveled hair and denim overalls stood behind an antique camera.

Out on the balcony, James Sanders—"an architect and a writer and a filmmaker, I guess you could say" (he wrote the 17-and-a-half hour PBS documentary New York)—said Ms. Geahan is the "doyenne of the modern literary world."

Her talent, he said, lies in "making literary pursuits and cultural pursuits glamorous and exciting and social and all of that. It's a fine New York tradition which has gone a little bit through the cracks and Brooke's doing her best to recement it. As late as the eighties I think there was a scene, with Jay McInerney and that crowd. There was sort of an energy and an excitement and a feeling that you know, you had to read Bright Lights, Big City to know the city."

Is there a book like that now?

"Netherland," he offered after a moment, referring to the novel by Joseph O'Neill about a lonely Dutch financier struggling to "feel" in post-9/11 New York.

"The economic downturn is actually going to be good for us," explained David Shamoon, who organizes these parties for the ALS. Mr. Shamoon was under the impression that as the economy tanks, the city's fanciest penthouses and rooftops will suddenly become more affordable for hosting events for the society.

The Daily Transom wondered how the organization was able to score this space, which comprised of two rooms and a spacious outdoor rooftop area with tremendous views. ("It feels like a big boat," observed Interview magazine editor Chris Bollen.)

But it turned out the building management had welcomed the party. "It adds creative prestige, or something," Mr. Shamoon said.

But does it really?

"No, but don't tell them."

Over in the corner, Daily Transom found Mr. Ames with his girlfriend Fiona Apple, chatting with photographer Patrick McMullan.

"This is really fun," said Ms. Apple. "Everybody is really cheerful and I'm liking everybody that I'm meeting." But then Ms. Apple noticed that her boyfriend had a smirk on his face as he was listening to her talk.

"What? Why don't you talk then?" she exclaimed, cracking a smile herself.

"No, no. I like your quote!" said Mr. Ames somewhat mockingly, but then obliged and took over for his shy girlfriend.

"I like how the photographer Patrick McMullan just told us that this is like the apartment of a 21^st century Gatsby," he said. "It's kind of interesting because Gatsby was right before Wall Street collapsed and this is like right before the total collapse.

"Brooke is actually a former student of mine and I'm very proud of her," Mr. Ames continued. "She got inspired to start the Accompanied Literary Society because she attended a very non-glamorous reading of mine at Barnes & Noble and that's what got her started. I thought it was glamorous enough, but I guess she didn't."

"She's got to start doing this for teachers next!" chimed in Ms. Apple.

"And community organizers! We need a party like this for community organizers!" added Mr. Ames, with apparent sarcasm.

Leaving those two to their corner, Daily Transom found Ms. Geahan on the dance floor in the adjoining room, twisting and tuning in a colorful, glittery mini-dress in front of Mr. Creed, with whom she was putting in a song request.

"It chose us," shouted Ms. Geahan over the music about the building. "They were building this penthouse and [publicist] Nadine Johnson said to me, ‘You want a do literary event, it's all yours. To showcase literature in a public sphere, 10 stories tall, shows that we actually still believe in the written word," she continued. "I think that is the foundation of human knowledge and it needs to be celebrated."

Suddenly Ms. Geahan was distracted by a song that made her want to dance again.

"Dance with me!" she said to the Daily Transom. "C'mon, you're gorgeous, you should be dancing!"

Graciously declining Ms. Geahan's offer, we wondered if she might be bringing back the writing spaces that the society used to offer to its members when it first began. (One writer quipped earlier to us that while these parties are fun, he wished they would bring back the actual working spaces.)

"We're bringing it back in two months," replied Ms. Geahan.

As the evening drew to a close, Ms. Crosley and former Harper's editor and current Lapham's Quarterly editor Lewis Lapham were still mingling about on the balcony as a gaggle of young literary types—magazine editors, editorial assistants, an MFA student who is kind of dating Gary Shteyngart, etc.—headed for The Scratcher bar on Fifth Street, where maybe they felt more at home.

Some of the guests, on their way out, received a gift bag; inside, a copy of Dancer by Colum McCann and a 16-page brochure for One York.

In fact, the beginning of October is like some hipster Hanukkah with the convergence of Across the Narrows and so many well-hyped albums slated for release on Oct. 4. On that Tuesday, the new Franz Ferdinand, You Could Have It So Much Better; the new Broken Social Scene, eponymously named; the new My Morning Jacket, Z; and the American release of the Go! Team’s Thunder, Lightning, Strike will be available for—legal!—public consumption. Some heads will pop; there will be rioting at Other Music. The international line-up—Franz Ferdinand is from Scotland, Broken Social Scene from Canada and Go! Team from England—plus My Morning Jacket (from Kentucky) is looking to turn indie stardom into commercial success, notches in their belts into money in their wallets. Along similar lines, the Canadian indie-pop sensations the Constantines, with their gruff, punk-like delivery, will look to firm up their American footing on Oct. 11 with Tournament of Hearts.

And Oct. 4 still keeps on giving. Fiona Apple has finally found something that takes longer than reading the full title to her last album: putting out a new one. Extraordinary Machine has been over five years in the making. She’s had label problems, producer problems, Internet problems—her album was leaked—and, well, her own “problems,” I am sure. In a perfect world, Ms. Apple would hop on a bus with Sinead O’Connor, whose new album Throw Down Your Arms comes out on the same day as hers, and Liz Phair, whose most recent foray into pop, Somebody’s Miracle, also arrives on that Tuesday, and they would tour the country. It would be like the Lilith Fair, but angrier.

Indie-pop crossovers also leave their mark on the fall. Sept. 27 brings the release of Jacksonville City Nights, from the frighteningly prolific, if not overbearing, Ryan Adams. (It’s his second album of the year.) On the same day, one can hear the official debut of Wolf Parade: Their Apologies to the Queen Mary has been floating around on the Internet for some time, and true to their pedigree—they’ve been touted by Modest Mouse front man Isaac Brock—it is a watered-down homage to the already-watered-down Modest Mouse. To find the real torchbearers, one need only look out for Minus Story’s sophomore effort, No Rest for Ghosts (Oct. 11). Incidentally, Sun Kil Moon, the pseudonym for former Red House Painters front man Mark Kozelek, serves up a real homage to Modest Mouse with Tiny Cities (Nov. 1), an album of M.M. covers.

Then there are the bands that will never cross over, and thank God for them. Electronica’s Broadcast try to make good on the promise of Ha Ha Sound with their fourth album, Tender Buttons (Sept. 20). Likewise, Brooklyn’s Panda Bear and Avey Tare, a.k.a. Animal Collective, attempt to make their hometown proud once again with Feels (Oct. 18), the follow-up to their critically acclaimed Sung Tongs. The soothing retro sound of the Clientele will fill headphones on Oct. 11, when their third full-length album, Strange Geometry, is released. And critical darlings the Fiery Furnaces will continue to push the boundaries of garage rock with Rehearsing My Choir (Oct. 25), while hip-hop alchemists Why? deliver Elephant Eyelash (Oct. 4), another attempt at genre-killing.

Among the bands in the ‘We Thought You Guys Were Dead, in Rehab or Had Become Born-Again Christians’ category, power-pop progenitors Big Star have returned from a long trip down the rabbit hole with their first studio album in 30 years, In Space (Sept. 27). The boys from Memphis have yet to have a good first run; none of their first three albums sold over 4,000 copies. With help from half of the Posies, they hope to change that.

If there was any doubt that post-punk is alive again and kicking, consider some old bands that you’re probably surprised are doing the same. Both Echo and the Bunnymen and The Fall have released albums this September, Siberia and The Fall Head’s Roll respectively. And in October, Gang of Four will unveil Return the Gift (Oct. 11), a re-recording of some of their old classic tracks.

And, unbelievably, Neil Young keeps rockin’ in a semi-free world after undergoing an operation for an aneurysm in his brain. He recorded eight of the 10 tracks for Prairie Wind (Sept. 27) days before the surgery. When asked by NPR’s Scott Simon if he did it then because he thought he might not have the chance afterwards, Mr. Young replied, “I always feel like I have to lay down all the songs because I might not get a chance.” Still hard-core!

The only thing left is music for the aural masochists. Ponder the philosophical implications of both Ashlee Simpson’s I Am Me (Oct. 18), her second album, and Santana’s All That I Am (Nov.1). Either way, both titles sound like threats. And for the religiously confused, there’s always Madonna, who (far from being a virgin) still wants to destroy all that you hold sacred. Her Confessions on a Dancefloor comes out Nov. 15. Perhaps we should tell her that a Jew doesn’t go to confession. But Atoning on Yom Kippur hardly makes for a better title.

In 1996, amid talk of girl power and waifdom, a tiny 18-year-oldsinger-songwriter-pianist named Fiona Apple made her debut with an album called Tidal . Although at first taken as a marketing team's capitalization on the Kate Moss moment, Ms. Apple soon revealed herself as a top-drawer popster; hit singles like "Criminal," which gave boy-girl relations a sexy jurisprudential spin, and "Sleep to Dream," with its wonderful pop adaptation of hip-hop rhythms, saw to that. But in no time, it seemed, Ms. Apple disappeared, heard from only on the Pleasantville soundtrack, where she delivered the Beatles' "Across the Universe" as a lucidly sensual art song.

Now she's back, with a fierce follow-up. Like so much about Ms. Apple, it looks fishy on paper–not least because the title, a rehearsal of Ms. Apple's own mantra, is 90 words long. Uncut, it reads: When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring There's No Body to Batter When Your Mind Is Your Might so When You Go Solo, You Hold Your Own Hand and Remember That Depth Is the Greatest of Heights and If You Know Where You Stand, Then You Know Where to Land and If You Fall It Won't Matter, Cuz You'll Know That You're Right .

Ms. Apple has not exactly expanded the scope of her interests; as on Tidal , these songs focus on romantic crises examined with a nearly morbid care. Ms. Apple, moreover, writes and sings in highly flown yet earthy ways, her alto seemingly caught inside a bluesy husk. Outbursts like "He don't give a shit about me" or "I'm full as a tick" pack a punch as calculated as they are effective. On When the Pawn , Ms. Apple more or less invents her own romantic fight game.

She and her producer, Jon Brion, whose work is dazzlingly fresh throughout the album, are in bravura control–from the musical arrangement to the dramatic delivery to the overall design and conception of Ms. Apple's 10-song suite.

Ms. Apple opens the album with "On the Bound," a midtempo piece in which she remains pessimistic and he–whose head she craves on her lap "one more time"–is all she needs. Mr. Brion orchestrates the tune with a Frankenstein lurch to the rhythms and a Carl Stalling lilt to the strange interpolations of levity that swing in. The song is not about Ms. Apple or her boyfriend, who you can't help thinking is a touch on the wolfish side; instead, it's a sonic explanation of the troubling world they think they inhabit. Next, the tempo speeds up, saws around, marginally brightens, as Ms. Apple asks for forgiveness for her "distance." A rhythmic and dynamic pressure point–an effective technique Ms. Apple and Mr. Brion repeat and refine in succeeding songs–occurs when, midsong, she takes off on the line "Now you have it, so baby tell me what's the word?" During such moments, no one in pop music seems to have more musical grip than Ms. Apple.

The record never stops. On "Love Ridden," as strings sting and caress, Ms. Apple observes that when she no longer calls someone baby, it can spell tragedy. On "Limp," personal rage unwinds exactly to thrilling rhythms. On "Fast as You Can," the music jumpcuts, and Ms. Apple, as her singing scats and deepens and then heightens again, earns the right to sing the words, "I'm blooming within." On "The Way Things Are," with a swayingly melodic chorus that could make it an enormous hit, Ms. Apple chooses to stay put: "So keep on calling me names," she sings, "keep on, keep on/ And I'll keep kicking the crap till it's gone."

Then there's "I Know," the most distinguished soul ballad in years. Calling herself a "crowbar," Ms. Apple offers: "And you can use my skin/ To bury your secrets in." She promises to wait by the backstage door. Then the album with the 90-word title ends.

–James Hunter

Sonic Youth's Millennial Boom

Sonic Youth–Thurston Moore, Kim Gordon, Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley–give this century a swell kiss-off with SYR 4: Goodbye 20th Century . The group, formed in 1981, really is this century's "last" rock band–rock as in "electric guitar." The Youth's howling, dissonant, distorted guitar music has always begun at the point where Jimi Hendrix's feedback left off. Strangely enough, this is the group's most "traditional" work yet–a two-CD set of "covers" of this century's most notorious modern composers, from John Cage to Steve Reich to–say it isn't true–Yoko Ono. Her 1961 composition, "Voice Piece for Soprano," is "sung" by Ms. Gordon and Mr. Moore's 5-year-old daughter Coco, who hollers her head off for 12 seconds.

Sonic Youth also tackle minimalism with Steve Reich's 1968 composition, "Pendulum Music." In a 1999 reprint of William Duckworth's collection of conversations with experimental composers, Talking Music , Mr. Reich denies he's a minimalist. He claims the M-word is "more pejorative than descriptive …" Pejorative or not, "Pendulum Music" is a sadistically minimal duet between rhythmic feedback and what sounds like a hurt dog yelping. In another minimal tune, or meditative, to use a favorite buzzword of composer Pauline Oliveros, is the Youth's rendition of her "Six for New Time." The "song" sounds like horses rhythmically clomping over a wash of electronic static while Mr. Moore whispers, "The queen approaches the throne," and a crescendo of feedback begins.

How can you not be tongue-in-cheek describing pieces that are simultaneously nonsensical and profound? This duality is most evident in works by two composers who are covered more than once, Christian Wolff (two pieces) and Mr. Cage (three). Mr. Wolff was a progeny of Cage's when the former was just a squirt in junior high. It's hard to tell their work apart. There are no melodies. Guitars noodle. Percussion is beaten or tapped. There's much curious electric bleating. Some chimes. Attempts at hip-hop scratching. The longest piece, Cage's half-hour-long "Four6" is long enough that the noises become narration. Why bother with blotter acid? Drop a tab of Cage instead!

How much of this music is Cage's versus Sonic Youth's? Is the band even following a score? In his book, Mr. Duckworth discusses "classical notation" with Cage as they go over a Cage piece called "Atlas Eclipticalis." "Sometimes [notation] works and sometimes it doesn't," Mr. Cage says.

Now, I've seen the score to "Atlas Eclipticalis." I've even playedit. Back in the mid-1970's, my high school band took part in a John Cage festival at the Cranbrook Academy of Art outside Detroit. As I remember, Cage's score instructed me to stand anywhere in the auditorium I wanted and periodically blat my trombone. The other 85 musicians had similar freedom. Gradually during the hourlong performance, all of us abandoned the score and wandered around playing whatever we wanted. Some majorettes even streaked (70's lingo for running buck naked) across the stage wearing John Cage masks. The composer himself was in the audience. Did Cage jump from his chair and cry, "This is not the piece I wrote!"? No.

He sat, laughing his head off. Maybe there was Eastern mystical significance to this composition. Maybe it was fraudulent. But I will remember how invigorating that Cage-inspired chaos was until my grave (or Y2K). A similar sublime experience is found listening to much of Goodbye 20th Century . Kronos Quartet, roll over! Sonic Youth has stolen your cultural mantle.

–David Bowman

Enraged by parking problems caused in their neighborhood by filming of a video for the alternative singer Fiona Apple, a group of Claremont Avenue residents decided to fight back. Their strategy: placing mirrors in their windows to reflect images of cameras and production equipment-thereby ruining all shots along the street.

Simple, elegant and, above all, effective.

At Community Board 9's meeting on Nov. 20, local residents savored a rare victory over a longtime neighborhood scourge: the snotty directors and snottier film lackeys that regularly take over their streets because-well, because they can .

Residents told the board that a crew working for Propaganda Films, the company filming the video, had broken a bunch of promises about parking. So they devised the mirror scheme. Before long, residents gloated, the film crew was on its knees and had met their every demand. (Propaganda officials had no comment.)

The mirror plan was a measure born of desperation-a weapon hauled out only when gentler tactics had failed. Twice in November, local resident Tom DeMott told The Observer , a production crew had posted "no parking" signs, to be enforced the same day-in violation of city code, which requires two full days of warning. Each time, residents demanded two warning days and insisted on a detailed filming schedule so they could walk their dogs or run to the store without being ordered around by a ponytailed New York University film student with a walkie-talkie.

The crew would murmur promises of compliance, Mr. DeMott said. But then they would quickly revert to their bad old ways.

Film crews for director Spike Lee and for the Sharon Stone vehicle Gloria had made their own little disruptions to neighborhood life in recent weeks, so these latest indignities had residents seething.

"So we devised a plan of resistance," Mr. DeMott told The Observer .

Soon after, about 25 residents met to plot what Mr. DeMott called "an effective deterrent." The day before, neighbors had spotted the crew, which ended up taking over the street five days for a few minutes of film, rehearsing a scene to be filmed later that week. The scene called for Ms. Apple to ride a crane down Claremont, creating the illusion that she was flying down the street.

The group conducted guerrilla drills, practicing with a few mirrors to determine which windows were placed for optimum disruptive effect. "We had enough angles covered," Mr. DeMott said, adding that they had about 15 mirrors in their arsenal. "We were more than ready."

Finally, when word of their plan reached the company, the crew apparently folded. Residents said crew members met their every demand, supplying detailed information about future no parking and production schedules.

"And we called a truce," Mr. DeMott said.