Jillian Mapes

Fiona Apple at Governors Ball on Sunday. Check out our gallery of pictures from the festival.

This weekend, Governors Ball took over Randall's Island for the latest installment of "Can New York City Host Its Own Major Music Festival?" Founders Entertainment, organizers of the second annual fest (that's what All Points West said, too), decided to go the "diverse" route, but at least they were nice enough to not get too mix-and-match, splitting up the lineup roughly day-by-day. Saturday could have been called the dance-y day, or the spring break day; its lineup included Passion Pit, Chromeo, Kid Cudi, Major Lazer, Santigold and Duck Sauce. Sunday, meanwhile, was a bit of a late '90s alt-rock time warp, with Beck, Fiona Apple, Modest Mouse and Built to Spill headlining amidst guitar-based indie bands from this era.

Sunday was visibly more well-attended—but does that mean it "won" the weekend? Taste is subjective—that much we can all agree on—so if you're a rave kid, you'd probably say Saturday won, whereas pretty much everyone else would say Sunday won (Beck's first NYC show in four years!). Since music festivals are often about the overall experience anyway, Sound of the City decided to measure the other ways that festival can satisfy—or annoy—attendees, using a 10-point rating system to score certain intangibles head-to-head (as well as a few bonus categories). Like golf, the goal is to have the lowest score in order to win. Which day emerged victorious? The answer below.

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Benjamin Lozovsky

Fiona Apple at Music Hall of Williamsburg in March 2012. More photos here.

"I just wanna feel everything," Fiona Apple declares on the chorus for "Every Single Night," the first track on her fourth album, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do (Epic). She stretches out the word "feel" out into six syllables, and that verbal calisthenic is a portent for the rest of the record; the opening lullaby has her vividly describing the way her racing mind keeps her awake at night, replaying interactions with others on endless loop and sprouting ideas long after the sun has sunk.

The notion that simply letting emotions run their course through one's body is in fact an exercise fraught with peril has orbited both Apple's work and her public persona since 1996, when she was 18 and her first album, Tidal, received both Buzz Bin status (a precious currency in the mid-'90s alt-rock era) and widespread critical acclaim. It's understandable that someone with so many tappable reserves of emotion would be so on edge that she wouldn't want to sleep, at least as a way to keep any subconscious thoughts from bubbling up unexpectedly and further coloring her waking hours.

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Evans The Death.

In this week's Voice I offered up a midseason report of sorts, listing 12 particularly outstanding tracks from this year. Here, for your listening pleasure, are the 12 songs in streamable form (via a combination of YouTube and Soundcloud so as to not lock anyone—or any songs—out). Happy listening, and if you'd like to share a 2012 song that's particularly tickled your ears, by all means do so in the comments.

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Benjamin Lozovsky

Fiona Apple on Friday night at Music Hall of Williamsburg. More photos here.

Fiona Apple
Bowery Ballroom
Monday, March 26

Better than: Holding it all in.

Before Fiona Apple took the stage at the Bowery Ballroom last night, Little Richard's "The Girl Can't Help It" pumped out of the speakers, its flirtatiously skipping beat booming throughout the packed room. The tale of a woman ruled by impulse turned out to be an ideal epigraph for Apple's 13-song performance, during which her songs old and new (not to mention borrowed) seemed to cascade out of her by sheer necessity.

Since bursting into the pop world in 1996 with her debut album Tidal and the mournful, spite-filled ode to an ex "Shadowboxer," Apple has had a lightning-rod presence. Her voice is deep and quivering, going into falsetto when necessary, as her lyrics describe her inner and outer demons in vivid, sharp detail—the music surrounding it bursts with filigrees and breakneck left turns and thundering piano. The energy that makes her music so vibrant sometimes spills over into her extra-musical public acts; one wonders what the TMZ-borne point-and-click-and-laugh news cycle would have made of her "this world is bullshit" acceptance speech at the 1997 Video Music Awards, or her problematic show at Roseland in 2000. (Judging by the titters and "OMG"s that accompanied the title announcement for her forthcoming album The Idler Wheel is wiser than the Driver of the Screw, and Whipping Cords will serve you more than Ropes will ever do—the second record in her four-item discography to go long on the nomenclature front#0151;it probably would not have been very kind.) Her last album came out in 2005; her public appearances since its promotional cycle ended have been scant.

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