Richer Wiser

Second album from Rustin Man aka Paul Webb from Talk Talk. Having waited 17 years for Drift Code, some may be surprised at Clockdust’s swift arrival, but the album’s roots can be found in the same extended sessions. “Early on I realised I had two albums worth of material,” Webb explains. “The first tunes I wrote were electric guitar based, with long arrangements that built up in layers to something sonically quite dense. These became the bulk of Drift Code. As a reaction, I wrote a batch of songs that were tighter in their structure but had more feeling of space. These make up the bulk of Clockdust.”

Fiona Apple defied categorization or any easy career path, almost running the pattern in reverse, opening her career as a highly touted and popular alternative singer/songwriter, then transitioning into a cult artist. Apple certainly benefited from the open-door policy of modern rock in the mid-’90s, following the path of crossover alt-rock piano-based songwriters like Tori Amos, but Apple was hardly an Amos copycat: she had a strong jazz undertow in her vocal phrasing and melodies, she had richer arrangements, she had a poppier bent to her songs. All these things helped her 1996 debut, Tidal, find a wide audience, one that increased considerably in the wake of the controversial video for the single “Criminal,” but Apple made it abundantly clear that she wasn’t an amateur provocateur with her sophomore album, When the Pawn Meets the King, an album that increased her critical reputation and cult, which would be pillars of support during her intense battles while making her third album, Extraordinary Machine. Collection includes: 'Tidal' (1996); 'When The Pawn…' (1999); 'Extraordinary Machine' (2005), and 'The Idler Wheel…' (2012).