Just as the The Idler Wheel has had enough time to spin through the iPods of her core fans (yeah, right, like that could happen), Fiona gifts us with a new track for the Apatow-directed This is 40 soundtrack. More than just a throwaway cut from that exquisite album, The Idler Wheel (and really I’m just going to keep praising that album as it’s my favorite for the year), “Dull Tool” finds Fiona in fine form.
Continuing the theme from her current LP, Fiona’s on a mission to feel everything, but her current love interest has “forgotten the difference between equanimity and passivity.” Afraid to rock the boat, he doesn’t “fuck when [he] fucks” or “kiss when [he] kisses” — he’s just a dead fish in the sack and in the relationship. But we all know flopping sea life isn’t left in Apple’s world to linger until it makes one’s entire life smell foul, instead it is blown out to sea in the tidal wave that is Fiona’s wordsmithing.
Her voice growls over circus like arrangements that recall the heady days of her Jon Brion-produced studio recordings. The lyrics are laced with just enough of Apple’s acrid barbs to completely destroy the man in question. Like a dull tool against the body, they hatchet a man to pieces in an unseemly manner. It’s, you know, a perfect Apple track.