Kevin Bronson on October 9th, 2013

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By Jeffrey Harvey

Fiona Apple and Blake Mills brought their 15-date “Anything We Want” tour to Disney Hall on Monday night.

The show’s title should have served as a not-so-subtle hint to those who felt inclined to shout out song requests during the performance, but alas, fans did. “You can keep yelling them out, but everything is already decided, and it’s right here on this piece of paper,” Mills informed the near-capacity crowd halfway through the brilliantly stripped-down production.

Mills is probably best known for his onetime affiliation with folksy L.A. outfit Dawes, but inside the industry, he’s a revered songwriter, producer and guitarist. His association with Apple goes back to when he opened for her in support of her 2012 release “The Idler Wheel …,” and tonight he would serve as the steady-handed little brother, to Apple’s troubled-genius sister personae in the musical “familial unit” that owned the stage for almost an hour and a half.

“Now that we’re here, I feel like taking the most risks,” Apple told the crowd before the show started. She walked over to a classroom-sized reversible chalkboard and scrawled the words:

TEACH TEACH TEACH
TEACH ME HOW
ME HOW ME HOW
ME HOW
TO BE FREE

Whatever it meant, it was well received by an appreciative and overall-respectful audience.

The tour’s backing band – bassist Sebastian Steinberg and drummer Barbara Gruska – provided a patient, parental rhythm support, for Apple and Mills to open up and sonically deconstruct their respective compositions.

“It’s like this all day, every day,” Steinberg remarked at one point during a playful disagreement between Apple and Mills about what song to do next. The sibling-like interplay between the two proved to be the dynamic focal point of the evening, and in her trademark innocent fashion, Apple took many opportunities to just sit on stage and admire Mills’ virtuoso guitar styling, as he ended many of the songs unaccompanied, and when he saw fit.

Apple did her part to justify the share of the spotlight throughout the performance too though. She blurted out random (and at times incoherent) statements ranging from “Apparantly, I cut my hair when I get stressed” to “Rex Reed, you’re a cunt” – a statement she claimed was for her father (actor Brandon Maggart), in response to a negative review the film critic supposedly gave him. She also spent time banging on, and draping herself over a bass drum in the vampiest way possible, and randomly doing backbends over her piano bench to rapturous applause.

The L.A. contingent of Apple fans did their best to let the artist know she is still relevant some 17 years after her Grammy-award winning debut album was released. “We love you!” and “You’re beautiful!” were heard more than once in the concert hall, and although Apple never responded, her inspired performance and playful mood indicated to most that she took to the goodwill to heart.

Photos by Craig T. Mathew/Mathew Imaging