FKA twigs MEGAREVIEW (LP1/M3LL155X/MAGDALENE
FKA twigs is a British R&B and art pop singer who came up as a backup dancer for various artists’ music videos, and decided to start her music career, releasing her first official EP, EP1, in 2012. I am not familiar with anything she’s done except for her feature in A$AP Rocky’s Fukk Sleep, so I don’t know what to expect, even though I’ve heard good things. I’ll be listening to her two studio albums and an EP she released between the two, chronologically.
LP1
I love it.
Although twigs isn’t fond of being categorized as an R&B artist, specifically alternative R&B, as she has stated in an interview with The Guardian, there really isn’t much else to be used to describe her music, and the term is pretty convenient to embody most of the sounds in LP1, so I’ll most likely be using it. The album is a mixture of strong, dark electronic production and twigs’ beautiful falsetto singing, taking form as either the sexually charged, euphoric vocals you hear in the chorus of Two Weeks, or the hymnic elements her voice has in Closer and the intro Preface. These two key elements constantly clash and form something way more impactful than what they’d be individually, and give the whole LP a soothing and simultaneously dark and dizzying atmosphere.
The highpoints in the album are when the two combine into grand moments such as the ending of Lights On, where the production amounts into a huge chunk of pure bliss, sounding like there are tens of different sounds all in sync with one another, or the processed, multi-layered chorus in the next track, Two Weeks. Another great quality to the production style in the album is that it gets to be adventurous when it wants, how it wants, whether by pulling back completely and minimalizing its role to let FKA twigs’ voice shine on Hours, or on my favorite track Pendulum, where the whole song is built around this unstable knocking and simple yet effective manipulated keyboards, completely fading out at times leaving the high-pitched vocals to themselves.
The lyrical themes are all built around love and passion, with varying levels of aggression to romanticism (Lights On, Two Weeks vs. Hours, Give Up) or regret, such as in Numbers, which showcases how far into the electronic side the production can go, with erratic drums and beeping at the start, progressing into some gorgeous synths under some of twigs’ most heartfelt singing in the project. The exception is Video Girl, the most personal track here, where she sings about her time as a backup dancer and the struggles that came with her intent on achieving fame. The lyrics hit hard and it serves as a really nice intimate moment in the album.
For the tracks I don’t like as much I have the two closers: Kicks and One Time, the latter being only available in the deluxe version, which is not on streaming platforms. Kicks, from what I could tell, is all about being enough for yourself, specifically sexually. Without the grand ambitious production from the rest of the album, this outro is left with okay vocals and an odd theme that doesn’t go anywhere, backed by some slightly annoying production decisions, and a nice chorus which is definitely the best part of the song. One Time, on the other hand, is just really bland compared to the craziness of the rest of the album, as it is the most stagnant and uneventful of the tracks.
The sound of LP1 is definitely intriguing, and I consider it a nice introduction to an artist I have high expectations for.
FAVORITE TRACKS: Pendulum, Video Girl, Two Days, Lights On
LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: Kicks
8.25/10
“You’re younger than I am broken. I dance feelings like they’re spoken, so my conversation’s not enough.”
M3LL155X
Read as “Mellissa”, this EP was released in August of 2015, and features 18 minutes of music spanned into 5 tracks, and I love to say there’s not one track here I don’t like
What surprised me about M3LL155X is how “explosive” twigs seems to be compared to LP1, where most of her tracks were sung in a comfortable, soothing falsetto tone, in here she isn’t afraid to let her voice carry out a lot more, which brings some much appreciated strong emotions and power to the songs here, great examples being her fast delivery on the hook of In Time, and her enchanting finish to Mothercreep.
The EP starts with Figure 8, which places the listener dead center in the chaotic instrumentals the project has to offer, with a banging bass right at the beginning. The track slowly progresses from its slightly angelic cadence into the weird, choppy vocal effects in the latter half, giving the track a nice finish. What I find a little underwhelming are the lyrics, sometimes they come off slightly meaningless, at least at first glance, but I feel they could have been used better, maybe to convey meaning other than love and relationships, which is done in the last two tracks, but not in such an effective way in my opinion, specifically on Mothercreep, a track supposed to be a mature hindsight to twigs’ mom’s decisions to her daughter’s life, which doesn’t come off as super personal in a way it could have. Like I said, however, the ending to this song is gorgeous, and I love how the song waits to bring in that climax, it really ends the EP on a huge high note.
To me the best the EP has to offer is In Time and Glass & Patron, the first being this infectious, addictive, ever-evolving fat banger, I just cannot get enough of it at all; and the latter being the weirdest, most electronic-influenced song here (I mention the umbrella electronic genre very carefully because I know fuck-all about it), with the oddest but most interesting progression here. That isn’t to undermine twigs’ vocals, as they are as good as ever, I just wish in tracks like this and I’m Your Doll, where she reaches some great vocal inflections, she’d make more use of them, but to me they feel like the vocals are somewhat teasing themselves to the listener, when they could’ve been used to a much greater extent.
I love this EP, I love its aggressiveness and how it surprised me, but I know, even as good as it is, that all the potential here could have been used a bit better.
RANKED TRACKS: In Time, Glass & Patron, Mothercreep, Figure 8, I’m Your Doll
8.15/10
“Paper cut it, I feel the slightest rip is a river that’s overflowing me”
MAGDALENE
Bruh.
I don’t even know what to say honestly, I’m completely blown away. This is heaven.
From the start, I thought this album was gonna be alright, but immediately after home with you I knew this shit was something else. This is by far her most cohesive, beautiful, emotional, greatest album overall. I seriously don’t even know what to say, I’m writing this immediately after my second listen, and I love almost every aspect of it.
I guess I’ll start by the things I liked the least, which were probably the tracks sad day and holy terrain, even though these tracks are at least great. The melodies in sad day are so unique and entrancing, really the only thing I didn’t like as much was the production, which felt like it could have gone a bit further. For holy terrain, I have mixed feelings towards it. While a part of me feels like it was a little weird, a bigger part is amazed at how well these two worlds merged with each other to form a track as beautiful as this; again, it doesn’t stand out as much as some others, and I think twigs sounds a bit like Ariana Grande at the beginning of the hook, but fuck me some moments in this song are insane.
I was a little indifferent towards thousand eyes at first, but I’ve come to appreciate a slow, ascending intro to this mindfuck of an album, and the track right after that, home with you, is pretty much perfect, I have nothing bad to say about it. I love the alternating between processed and raw vocals, and it just ends so beautifully, it’s seriously otherworldly.
“Otherworldly” is actually a great word to describe almost anything here. mary magdalene is a gorgeous look into the ethereal feminine theme this album is solidified over, and sounds like something you’d hear as you ascended into heaven after dying; fallen alien is aggressive like something out of M3LL155X, but even more polished and fits perfect into the context of the album, and after it starts a nearly flawless outro of three tracks: mirrored heart, daybed and cellophane. This is pure emotion, I cannot describe what I felt while listening to these three. The first is probably one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, or at least that’s what I feel right now. I have to be extremely careful not to listen to this too much, so it doesn’t lose its magic on me.
daybed is much simpler instrumentally, with an ambient undertone to the track that just really fits my personal tastes. The lyrics in this track are raw feels, in fact the lyrics in MAGDALENE in general sound much more mature and fleshed out, and I absolutely love it, it’s heartbreak, bittersweet beauty in every direction, all connected by this weird theme of something greater than humanity; if twigs’ intent was to make herself look extraterrestrial with her art, but at the same time undeniably human, then I think she succeeds, because, to me, it feels like she is the music, it feels like she pulls these songs straight from her soul, and that’s why it’s so alien, because it is incredibly human.
For the closer, cellophane absolutely wrecks your heart with a gorgeous piano ballad, and I’m very happy I never heard this song, considering it is the lead single to the album, because it just added so much emotion to the outro of one of the best albums I’ve heard. I seriously cannot get enough of it, and I think I’ll go sleep for a while now just to clear my mind a little bit. I’m sorry if these three “reviews” haven’t gone super in depth with the albums, but I feel like if I talk about them any longer they’ll lose some of their beauty to me, plus I’m not doing this to be perfectly objective, just to share my super biased, super inexperienced thoughts on what I listen to. So I guess just listen to them. They’re awesome. Peace.
FAVORITE TRACKS: home with you, mirrored heart, cellophane, daybed, mary magdalene
LEAST FAVORITE TRACK: none
9.45/10
“Aching is my laughter, busy is my pastime, telling is my silence, blurring my horizon, smothered is my distance, careful are my footsteps, possessive is my daybed.”
