"I stand no chance of growing up,” she sings on “Valentine.” But Idler Wheel is the most grown-up album she’s ever made. According to Drayton, there isn’t a single electric instrument on it: The entire recording is acoustic. You can hear Apple’s newfound clarity, her resignation, her paradoxical optimism. “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key,” she sings on “Werewolf.” And a couple times, as on “Daredevil” or “Regret,” she screams, a full-body scream, over almost as soon as it begins. It is the sound of one world ending and another one right behind it, beginning again."
— Zach Baron for Spin
There are things I must say. I can feel them waiting under dust in the attic of my head. I stuffed it all up there when the winter came and I lost my self. Now all that stuff is tumbling down the stairs and rolling right on out the front door. I can shake my head and it doesn’t clank and rattle anymore. There is less to carry…less to store. I am moving again. I can roll my arms in humungous circles. My legs have their own ideas when the music gets loud. All I can do is explode in a million different directions and know that everything I splatter will smile or frown. Either way they will have some of me on them. I will scream so loud their eyelids will fold backwards: “Man, I’m sorry! There is just no way I could keep all that inside me.”
