Fiona Apple SXSW 2012: Singer Comes Back in Austin But Don't Call it a Comeback

A live wire is dangerous -- and, yes, exciting -- because of its power and unpredictability. But it's also an adjective that can be hard to come by at SXSW, where 2000-plus acts play here, there and everywhere, and often deliver rote set after set.

But live wire is the most apt descriptor for Fiona Apple, an alt-era singer-songwriter who became an unlikely pop star off a disquietingly porn-y music video for 'Criminal' but has since proven to be one of the 1990s most enduring artists. Enduring, but also rarely seen.

It's been seven years since Apple released an album -- and five since she has performed outside of Los Angeles -- so expectations were sky-high for her long-delayed return at Stubb's, especially after she'd recently announced her (oh so lengthily titled) new album would be on the way. Those expectations provided Apple and the show itself with a palpable electricity.

Wearing long hair in a high ponytail, a pink sports bra under a black negligee with a flowing black skirt, she emerged and immediately flailed about for a few moments to release some of her apparently unending supply of nervous energy.

Her eyes were dark, her skin tight and, when she launched herself into 'Fast as You Can,' her voice ragged -- but at no loss to its power, even despite some sound issues that buried her vocals toward the start. She was also manic and intense, and when she sang "You think you know how crazy/How crazy I am," we thought no, but we can imagine. And then, after admitting to a genuine onstage space-out during 'Paper Bag' ("Because I was like, 'F--, I'm doing a show!"), she let slip some self-mocking crazy. "You're imaginary, you're all in my head!" she yelled at the crowd. "You're not real!"

Watch Fiona Apple Perform 'Fast as You Can' Video
She held it together, if sometimes barely. Her voice cracked into an emotionally ravaged Cobain-esque scream during 'On the Bound,' her too-thin frame shook as she bashed away at the piano, her teeth grit together while she spit out her poetics. During 'A Mistake,' she collapsed on the piano, her head between her arms while the guitarist wailed away.

Apple then debuted her first new song, 'Anything We Want,' during which she accompanied herself by playing triangle on a twisted metal pipe, like a thinner and no-less weird Tom Waits. "We can, we can," she sang, "we can do anything we want." It felt like a necessary reminder, not only because she's Apple and, of course, she can do stuff like start late and run long -- but more importantly that she's capable of doing it all.

She was clearly trying to stave off the bastards in her head from getting her down all night and after delivering another fantastic new tune called 'Valentine' -- a slow, dark love ballad -- she began pacing back and forth like an unprepared student before exams before trying to convince herself that, as she sang on 'Sleep to Dream,' "I got my feet on the ground." (Though she clearly wasn't listening to her own "don't be so sensitive" advice.)

"Be kind to me, or treat me mean," she then crooned, "I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine." And that was the takeaway from the extraordinary night, really. But that was also from 2005. In her final new song, 'Every Single Night,' she slightly altered her modus operandi to "I want to feel everything," and maybe she's become less adept at taking it all in -- but thankfully she's just as good as spitting it back out.

Watch Fiona Apple Perform 'A Mistake' Video
Times and perhaps tragedies have taken their toll, but Apple made clear the difference between nostalgia and currency is rawness and realness. She has a timeless voice, so indelible it hardly felt like she'd been away, and so this felt more like a refrain rather than a comeback.

Is she the same "bad, bad girl" that she sang about on her set-closing 'Criminal'? She looks like her, if older, thinner and even more intense, but what matters is she's still standing, still singing and still capable of delivering an electrically charged performance that is equal parts terrific, terrifying and triumphant.

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