One of the album’s unifying themes is women and Apple’s relationships with them, not in a rah-rah #empowerment sense but in a much more complicated and often very raw manner. A standout is “Shameika,” named for a schoolmate of Apple’s who — in a eureka moment for the artist that she admits Shameika probably doesn’t remember — told our antsy, tortured, self-doubting future songwriter that she “had potential.” The verses are chaotic torrents of piano and percussion, and then the world suddenly stops as Apple sings, in an almost hammy, Elton John kind of way, “But … Shameika said I had potential.”

This record is so casually wise about formative trauma and the ways our early experiences ripple outward, not just in our own lives but in those closest to us: “Evil is a relay sport when the one who’s burned turns to pass the torch.” My therapist would love this album.

I’m curious what, if any, sonic analogues this record brings to your minds. It doesn’t sound quite like anything else in Apple’s — or anyone’s — catalog, but something about the mastery and liberation of it reminds me of “Hissing of Summer Lawns”-era Joni Mitchell. I’ve long thought of Fiona and Joni as kindred spirits, not sonically but more because of the way they both turned their backs on easier career trajectories and instead hacked their own winding paths out of wilderness. I also find their songwriting to often be interrogating one of the same central questions, which is whether a woman can ever be truly free while also loving men. Because for all its moments like “Ladies,” this record certainly has some things to say about men!

PARELES Sonically, I’d say this is her Tom Waits pivot, similar to the turn he made on “Swordfishtrombones,” when he decided that the usual singer-songwriter productions weren’t getting to the raucous, clattery essence of his songs. But his voice and Apple’s are worlds apart.