My Favorite Album Ever (maybe)

Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine (2005)

1. "Extraordinary Machine"
2. "Get Him Back"
3. "O' Sailor"
4. "Better Version of Me"
5. "Tymps (the Sick in the Head song)"
6. "Parting Gift" *this is probably my favorite song on the album, but it's a tight race
7. "Window"
8. "Oh Well"
9. "Please Please Please"
10. "Red Red Red"
11. "Not About Love"
12. "Waltz (Better Than Fine)"

Fiona Apple is an interesting character. She's one of the few musicians out there whose music I love and admire but is simultaneously someone I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get along with in real life. She's kooky, and so am I, but I think my kookiness is more internal than hers. Just a guess.

This album was introduced to me by my friend and then-roommate Chelsea in 2005 or 2006, when we were  both freshmen at Southern Utah University. In August of '07, we went to Portland State University in Oregon, and this album (along with Kate Nash's Made of Bricks and Ingrid Michaelson's Girls and Boys) was played heavily in our house and car, as well as on my iPod. Ergo, many of the Extraordinary Machine songs remind me instantly of my time at Portland State - the confusing architecture of the buildings, the adorable daycare kids, the businessman street preacher, the moss on the trees, the men in scarves and beanies, the constant threat of rain.

This is also an album that my husband and I both really like, and that is quite rare for us.