Fiona Apple

Fiona Apple at the Newmark Theatre, Oct. 3, 2013.

(David Greenwald/The Oregonian)

Blake Mills performing with Fiona Apple, Oct. 3, 2013.

For over an hour on Thursday night, Fiona Apple and Blake Mills turned the Newmark Theatre into a musician's playground, touching on jazz, country and the unfiltered animal of Apple's 2012 masterpiece,

The Idler Wheel…

. Then a sentence turned the evening into chaos and tears. But that needs a little context.

The release of The Idler Wheel… (short for a much longer title) last year was a happy surprise. It came seven years after Extraordinary Machine, itself a seemingly reluctant album that only saw release after a fervent "Free Fiona" fan campaign, and when she emerged with her first tour dates in ages in spring 2012, the music press greeted her with wonder.

"Apple is in a zone at the moment," New York Magazine's Nitsuh Abebe wrote upon seeing her at Austin, Texas' South by Southwest music festival. "She seems… hyper-alive."

As she followed up the album release with a national tour, that sentiment was everywhere, including her career-spanning show last July at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. But the 2012 dates slipped into infamy thanks to a drug arrest in Texas (for hashish possession) and gossip-blog ridicule of her on-stage attempts at explanation, captured on video. What TMZ didn't know was that Apple had been used to a safe space: during her touring drought, she and Mills were both frequent drop-ins at L.A.'s Largo, a West Hollywood institution that's long been the home base of Jon Brion, Apple's former producer. Apple's played the rare headlining show there, but most frequently she showed up at friends' sets, appearing often at Brion's free-flowing residency for a short set of jazz covers and the occasional dip into her catalog. Largo contains a unique atmosphere: under the watchful administration of owner Mark Flanagan, phones and cameras are banned, advertising is limited to word of mouth, and years of thoughtful booking and grassroots audience-building have made it the city's most welcoming stage. For an outspoken woman under the glare of public scrutiny since age 18, when she released Tidal, her debut album -- why leave?

To her credit, Thursday marked another attempt to try. The show was the first night of "Anything We Want: An Evening with Fiona Apple and Blake Mills," a 15-date October tour intent on bringing Largo's intimacy and assurance on the road. Before the music began, a familiar Irish voice addressed the crowd over the loudspeakers. It was Flanagan. Turn off your cell phones and electronics, he said. Here we go.

And they did, for a while. Apple and Mills, joined by an agile rhythm section, played new material and old songs remade for their partnership -- a striking blend of raw passion and traditionalist craft. They opened with a previously unheard duet that positioned their aesthetics in countermelodies, Mills calm and ruggedly soulful as Apple's vibrato raged. As a singer, her talent is boundless: in songs such as "Every Single Night" and "Dull Tool," a track from the film This Is 40, her voice rose from whispering, girlish prettiness to an imposing, full-throated roar. Mills, armed with a rack of guitars, kept pace with bluesy playing that edged into alt-rock bluster.

Their new song was Apple's first co-write, she announced, and in another first, they played seductive Tidal track "The First Taste," a song Mills said had never been performed live. Another new song found her reach up the piano in ascending arpeggios and calling out for love, the chorus lingering on the word "You." They played through a number of The Idler Wheel… favorites, making time for Mills' slyly funny material, including "Don't Tell Our Friends About Me," a country song given brief feminine perspective from an added Apple part.

Apple, who canceled a run of dates last November to be with her dying dog, seemed giddy to be back on stage. Beyond giddy, perhaps: between songs, her banter was rushed, sometimes fragmented, and peppered with profanity; Mills' steadiness was accented by her constant, anxious motion. When Mills sang, she draped herself over a bass drum, and she brought a box of unlikely percussion objects to the stage, including tree bark from Venice, Calif. -- her home for the last few years -- and clung to them throughout the set. She flubbed a lyric in "Anything We Want" and started the song over. When she sang, though, it was like nothing else in the world existed for her: just the song and the microphone, a relationship she has mastered.

Apple doesn't sing about Springsteenian blue-collar workers or dancing until dawn: she sings about bad love and desperate feelings and the immense difficulty of being Fiona Apple. What makes her capable of writing a song like "Anything We Want" is probably the same factor that makes telling the crowd a joke and moving down the setlist like a factory-made pop star a perilous task. But still, there was humor. The duo sparred about Billy Joel fandom and "Uptown Girl," and Apple, secure for the moment in the crowd's affections, made light of past blow-ups: "People come see me to see the crash," she said early on, and fell to the floor in a knowing pratfall.

But the crash came, despite Flanagan, despite the cell phone ban, despite a room that had seemed warm and welcoming for over an hour. The band had two songs left when the heckler opened her mouth.

"Get healthy, we want to see you in 10 years," a woman called into the silence.

Apple, sitting at the piano, turned distraught.

"I am healthy," she said, and stood up to face the audience.

The next few minutes were full of awful madness: Apple visibly emotional and swearing at the heckler, most of the crowd shouting support, but some lodging more insults. "You're a has-been!" a man shouted from the rafters. That shook her. Mills approached her and spoke into her ear. She called for the house lights to go up and asked for the first heckler to leave. She wanted to walk off stage; for long moments it seemed like the show would end right there, all her stormy power evaporating. But the lights went down and the band did one more, cutting the ballad "I Know" from the set. That would've been too much. Apple, in tears, apologized and walked off, calling it "a historically stupid night."

She also called TMZ "turd-munching zombies," which was very funny. But it was a dark conclusion to an otherwise remarkable night, and a reminder of why Apple has fought so vocally against celebrity culture and the venomous, body-shaming judgment that comes with it.

"I'm not going to convince someone I'm healthy," she said at one point, and whatever the state of her personal life -- a life that continues to include being an unparalleled performer, between-song idiosyncrasies aside -- she shouldn't have to.

It would be wise next time, for those making the investment of an evening and a ticket price, to remember what to say to a vulnerable, complicated genius who doesn't visit often: nothing at all.

-- David Greenwald