Fiona Apple went years without doing any interviews. She’s been doing more lately, but it’s still rare to see her on any kind of TV show. Yesterday, though, Apple appeared on Democracy Now!, a WBAI series that mostly focuses on politics. On the show, Apple spoke to host Amy Goodman for a good long stretch, talking about a lot of different things.

Apple appeared on the show with Native American activist Eryn Wise, and she talked about her decision to talk about the original tribal territories where she recorded her new album Fetch The Bolt Cutters. (In the Fetch The Bolt Cutters liner notes, Apple includes that the LP was recorded “on unceded Tongva, Mescalero Apache, and Suma territories.”)

Wise has been leading the initiative that artists, in concerts, should talk about the original occupants of the land where the shows are. Since Apple can’t tour right now, Wise gave her the idea to acknowledge some things about where she made the album instead. “Acknowledgement is the first step, in a series of a lot of steps, towards healing anything,” said Apple. Later on, she called Thomas Jefferson’s policy toward indigenous people “so boldly evil,” said that L. Frank Baum was in favor of genocide, and put forward the idea that more Native Americans should be teaching in American schools.

Apple also talked about her song “Relay,” built from a line that she’d written when she was 15:

I had been assaulted when I was about 12 or 13, and immediately questions of guilt and innocence and retaliation and acceptance and peace and war — all of these things, it was all living in me all of a sudden. I didn’t know how to wrap my head around somebody wanting to hurt me or anybody like that. I didn’t understand it. So the first thing I remember thinking was, “Well, something must’ve been done to him.” That was my thought about him, that somebody had burned him, and he saw somebody — me — who looked vulnerable enough to burn, and maybe thought that would take the burn off of him. But it doesn’t. It just passes it on. He keeps it, and I got it, too….

I spent a couple of years aware of internet culture, and my whole thoughts about that thing became very small and very personal and very kind of petty. But it’s all kind of the same thing. It’s just people feeling bad about something, or feeling embarrassed, or feeling weak, and just trying to take that out on someone else.

She also talked about how “For Her” was inspired by watching the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings:

Trump, Kavanaugh, all these guys, they bring it all back. So sitting there, and watching that man, and knowing that he was going to be on the Supreme Court — it just hurts me down to the marrow. And on that subject, it makes me feel — seeing that guy’s anger and his entitlement to make decisions on behalf of America, basically. Knowing or believing that he had violated somebody does make me think about the other issue that we’re talking about here today: People who are in power, who are basically descendants of people who assaulted and killed your own families… I don’t, I cannot imagine what it’s like to be an indigenous person right now and to watch everybody else living and going about everything else that you’re talking about, all the problems that are going on right now, and just ignoring you, just not even looking at you.

Apple also said that she hope a song like “Ladies” will “give catharsis and will give expression to the people who may not actually be able to voice what’s happened to them,” and that hearing her sing the word “rape” will help other people feel empowered to use the word to describe what’s been done to them:

One day, I sang that line [“good morning, good mornin’, you raped me in the same bed your daughter was born in”] and it sank into me. And I finally felt the anger that I had never felt for the man who assaulted me when I was a child. I sang that line over and over again until I really felt it. And when I felt it, I finally felt anger, and it was an amazing thing. You need to feel your anger in order to get past it. I’m hoping that it will do the same for other women.

Finally, Apple said why she decided to release Fetch The Bolt Cutters in April, during the height of the pandemic, when people at her label wanted to wait until October:

My friend Mikaela, aka King Princess — she’s a musician — she texted me one day a few weeks ago saying, “You gotta release your record. I know the record’s done. You gotta release it. You gotta release it. People really need music now.” And she’s way more in touch with what’s going on than I am. And I was like, “Yeah, you know, that does make sense. But I thought, “It’s OK. Stuff will come out soon anyway.” I just wasn’t really thinking about it that much.

And then I got a rollout schedule, proposing all the different things that would go on from nowuntil the release of the record, which would end up being in October. And it had my first song coming out in June, like at the end of June. And that just set me off on a two-day text tirade, making my case for putting out the album now. You know, I know it takes a lot more than just pushing a button, but push a button. The album’s done. It can go out digitally, and people can enjoy it.

This was just all a big matter of logic, because if we waited, I would have been lost in the mix. I wanted to be able to be heard. I don’t really like to open my mouth in a room and speak unless I feel like people are going to listen. If I don’t think you’re going to listen, then I’m just going to walk away. So, I wanted to put it out when I thought that it would have the best chance, because I put a lot of work into it.

I knew that it would help people who are fans of mine because they’re just waiting around for so many years. So it’s like Oh yeah, the new record’s here! Good! That’s something to for me do for a couple of days. But I’ve heard that it’s actually making people feel free and happy. It might be helping people feel alive or feel free or feel creative. And that’s the best thing that I could hope for. That and also trying to tie my songs in with things that I believe in.

Shout out to King Princess for that. Watch the interview below.

Fetch The Bolt Cutters is out now on Epic.