Clean Slate/Epic

Fiona Apple’s less than-prolific output generates a good deal of attention, but this one is worth the wait. Call it the seven-year itch; now 34, Apple’s range as a singer seems to have caught up with the daunting emotional depth of her music, to the point where she can grab a quiet song like “Daredevil” by the throat and belt out a self-implicating line ( “Seek me out/ Look at, look at, look at, Look at me…” ) with the soulful, even worldweary, rage of someone possessed. This is the other part of what pushes her last album, 2005’s Extraordinary Machine, so far into the rearview: that was also a band project, while The Idler Wheel… – co-produced with veteran rocker Charley Drayton – focuses on Apple and her piano, with lean percussion loops and occasional acoustic bass as her only accompaniment. The stripped-down ambience gives her room to dip and dive over some superb melodies, whether she’s near-whispering the nursery rhyme-ish “Every Single Night” or demolishing an old boyfriend in “Regret.” On “Werewolf,” she even taps into Brill Building-era Carole King and Laura Nyro, trailing out with a bouncy refrain of “Nothing wrong when a song ends in a minor key.” Nothing wrong, indeed.