Music Critic Archie Marks reviews FKA twigs’ transfixing third album
FKA twigs has always specialised in the surreal. Her compositions have the unique power of suffocating the listener to the point of epiphany, whether she’s hurling her tears at the sky in ‘fallen alien’, or voguing in the Matrix in ‘Glass & Patron’. twigs’ production, coupled with her singular voice, keeps fans coming back even through her constant reinvention. Her latest form – rave angel – is her most arresting, compelling and startling yet.
The third album in the career of FKA twigs, EUSEXUA is a revelation, another innovation from an artist who has never stopped innovating. It reminds you of her idols (across the album there are whispers of Bjork and Madonna) and her contemporaries (some of these compositions would be suited to the voices of Kelela or Caroline Polachek), yet twigs remains in a class of her own.
EUSEXUA’s title was devised by twigs ostensibly as a portmanteau of ‘sex’ and ‘euphoria’; in interviews she’s described it as a feeling of intense bliss, feeling nothing and everything all at once. Examples include: dancing into the early hours; kissing a lover until you both turn into amoeba; the sensation of pure clarity and wholeness.
“EUSEXUA is a revelation, another innovation from an artist who has never stopped innovating
If you need another definition, look to the title track: a thumping four-to-the-floor piece that crescendos and climaxes like a wave as twigs sings of ‘flying capsized’, her wings clipped then subsequently made anew. In the music video, she breaks free from the chains of her office job and sets herself loose amid a sea of undulating bodies, no concern except music and movement. Eusexua, if I had to give a definition of my own, is a primal homecoming unto oneself, an embrace of one’s basest desires.
Twigs’ battle for this embrace has been hard-won. In recent year she’s been subject to racism from British tabloids, had fibroid tumours removed from her uterus, and was the victim of an abusive relationship. So, when she controls her own sensuality – for instance, on the Ray of Light-esque ‘Girl Feels Good’ – it is wholly satisfying. In commanding men to listen to the wants of their female counterparts, twigs simultaneously commands the direction of her craft, funnelling the tribulations of her inner life into her art. Like the robot persona she adopts later on ‘Drums of Death’, she reboots.
While not itself a rave album, EUSEXUA’s themes and concept are indebted to rave culture. (twigs has said as much, claiming she came up with the title in a rave in Prague and scribbled it on the back of her hand in the club toilet.) ‘Room of Fools’ celebrates the communal spirit of getting sweaty with strangers; atop a pumping beat and petrol-doused synths, twigs crafts a portrait of humanity that is divisible by its values and beliefs but united by its ‘open wounds’.
“The titular striptease, in this sense, becomes representative of the baring of one’s emotions; a performance in sensitivity
As its title suggests, though, EUSEXUA’s chief concern is the human body. ‘Perfect Stranger’ has twigs finding solace in the anonymity of a one-night stand; on ‘24hr Dog’, she gives herself over to her lover with complete trust. It would’ve been easy to fall back on cliché but twigs is wiser than that, finding nuance and tenderness between sweat-soaked pores.
EUSEXUA’s carnal centrepiece is the chilly, cerebral ‘Striptease’, where references to intimacy are abstract (‘I’m borderline… arch my spine’) and the metallic, clanging production seems at odds with the suggestive nature of its title. This contrast speaks to a recurring theme of much of EUSEXUA’s back half: the struggle to be vulnerable. The titular striptease, in this sense, becomes representative of the baring of one’s emotions; a performance in sensitivity. It’s ultimately a metaphor for the very practice of autobiographical music.
Twigs develops this struggle on ‘Sticky’, an electronic ballad that could’ve been produced by Aphex Twin if Aphex Twin had robot arms in place of human ones. ‘My body aches to be known’, she sings quaintly before she drowns into a vat of self-loathing, her voice chopped up with whirrs and glitches. The journey to confidence and self-acceptance, as twigs can attest, is not linear – although she finds solace on ‘Keep It, Hold It’, clinging to what she knows even as the world around her becomes increasingly alien. It’s a prescient sentiment that could sound trite from the lips of a lesser artist, but twigs’ angelic, wounded delivery helps her sell it to an astonishing degree.
“She pulls the worlds of dance, trance and techno into her orbit, not the other way around
Though, if you have no interest in the lyrical content, EUSEXUA is still a sonic treat; a mesmerising workshop of futuristic textures and vocal processing. ‘Perfect Stranger’ backpedals from its trance-like intro into an enveloping garage-adjacent track. ‘Drums of Death’ is the most avant song in the tracklist, an arresting array of stomps and claps. ‘Striptease’ mesmerises in increasing measures as it progresses, its apocalyptic clangs quickening into a drum ‘n’ bass outro that hurtles into the ears like shooting stars.
At a time when pop stars are bending over backwards to reinvent themselves (for example, Beyoncé’s country pivot or whatever Jojo Siwa’s been up to recently), the genre shifts that twigs makes on EUSEXUA feel so singular because of their authenticity; she pulls the worlds of dance, trance and techno into her orbit, not the other way around. twigs’ description of the album as a ‘pin at the centre of the core of my artist’ feels apt; not only is this her most fully realised project to date, but also feels like a breath of fresh air on her personal journey.
On the serene closer, ‘Wanderlust’, twigs exhales, transcending the physical realm and inviting her lover to look for her floating amongst the eusexua. It sounds inhuman, yet the album’s contents – surreal as they are – are a reminder of the human experience, our capacity to make beauty from life’s chaos and misery. We are all deserving of ecstasy, twigs postulates, if only you know how to attain it, to let go of earthly troubles. If all else fails, head to the dancefloor and find eusexua; twigs will join you once she’s beamed down from space.
10/10
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