I used to do a lot of album reviews on social media, but in the last few years for some reason I’ve stopped doing them. Not that I’ve stopped listening to new music … that would be horrible. As a musician, it’s kinda my job to keep myself abreast of new music, to exercise my ears, as it were. Sometimes it’s not an easy task to be honest, as a fair-sized swath of “modern pop music” (the air quotes are on purpose) just doesn’t resonate with me. Having said that, I genuinely believe that the only really important thing is talent and hard work. Even if the music itself leaves me cold, if the musician or band has talent, play their instruments (or sing) well, and write their own music, and seem to be trying to create something unique, original, that pushes the envelope and moves the art form forward in some way, then they deserve a listen with open ears and an open heart. So that brings me to FKA Twigs, a British singer songwriter who burst onto the hip-hop (kinda), R & B (sorta), eclectic pop (definitely!) scene a while ago (her first album, LP1 was released in 2014, and received a lot of attention). She started out as a dancer (and boy, can she move!) and moved to making her own music, and thanks to some very unique (one might even say “challenging”) music videos, from there into acting (she is currently in theatres co-starring with Bill Skarsgård in the remake of The Crow, and apparently, though the film itself is getting horrible reviews, FKA Twigs gets an occasional nod for her first-time acting. With all this other stuff going on, and after a by all accounts disastrous relationship-then-breakup with actor Shia LaBeouf (huh, who saw that coming, he’s such a stable guy!…), Twigs found herself out of creative steam, musically, and hadn’t released any music since her 2019 album Magdalene. However, after actually moving to Prague for the year-long “Crow” filming gig, Twigs found herself drawn to the underground Rave culture that Eastern European cities are (in)famous for, and this started her thinking about using some of the sounds and techniques from Rave and EDM to inform her own music, and “Eusexua” is the result.

As usual, her image on the album cover is confrontational, after finishing the album in preparation for publicity, she shaved the front half of her head, and has been seen with some truly remarkable and complex hairpieces in videos and interviews for the album. To my eye, it also looks like the length of her face and pointedness of her chin has been altered in the image, she honestly doesn’t look quite as much like an alien normally…

However, we’re not here for her looks, are we? Twigs has always had a very high, pure voice, a little on the fragile side, with a bit too much “baby doll” affect for me personally, and that’s definitely still there on this album, but the saving grace is how truly acrobatic her voice is (dare I say, almost Kate Bush-like in her Wuthering Heights days?) and a big surprise to me is the really wonderful full-throated modulation she’s added to her repertoire – the final song on the album “Wanderlust” had the hairs all over my body standing up – she lets loose a gorgeous vibrato-driven vocal belt that is truly electrifying.

The entire album is really good, very eclectic (she loves to write odd endings to her songs for some reason, almost every track ends with a stylistic change, I don’t know why, but it’s unique and I like it), and laced with the beats and soaked in the technical wizardry of electronic dance music. The eponymous lead-off single from the album throbs with a fast dance beat, which made the speakers in my car rattle. Her clear ethereal vocals float over the top and there’s a point in the song where everything takes off that made me bounce around in my car like an idiot. From there it rolls into “Girl Feels Good,” a treatise for her young nephew on how to treat women right (if I’m reading the lyrics right), which has an insanely catchy danceable hook, and then into yet another strong track, “Perfect Stranger”. There really isn’t a weak track on the album (my least favorite is the 2nd last “24hr Dog” and even that is catchy, if a bit uneven. One thing that you should prepare for if you’re going to give this album a listen, is Twigs’ habit of changing direction quite suddenly mid-song, there are several tracks that feature some radical changes of tempo and style, but they’re always handled well, and though some might find them jarring, after a couple of listens, I found myself nodding my head, thinking “Ok, that makes some sense there.” There are unique and I might even say “quirky” flourishes in most of the tracks, which some might find overwrought, but I salute her for packing the album completely full of ideas and eclectic choices.

So, what’s the theme of the whole thing? The title, “Eusexua” is Twig-speak for “Love”, based on the chorus of the title track:

And if they ask you
Say you feel it,
But don’t call it love,
Eusexua.

There are numerous references to the ideas of sexual freedom and liberation on the album. “Perfect Stranger” talks about the pleasures of anonymous encounters, saying to a man she’s hooked up with:

But that’s alright I say,
We’re all getting through this our own way,
I’d rather know nothing than all the lies,
Just give me the person you are tonight…

Not everything is in service of that messaging, there are songs that are just for fun, like the almost maniacally upbeat J-pop adventure of “Childlike Things” including a whole verse sung in Japanese, and a shout out to Tokyo. I imagine there’s quite a fan base for Twigs in Japan! I’m going to include a link to the YouTube video that went up a couple days ago for the song “Striptease” which is just … omygod, eye popping is understating it. It shows off her acting chops, her choreography and dance capabilities, and her ability to morph herself into a floating, spiky ball of limbs and heads. Honestly, I don’t know how she did it. 🙂