REVIEW: FKA Twigs – Eusexua

An FKA Twigs album is an event album. For those of us who still care about the album as a medium, it’s very exciting when a talented artist shares this passion. As someone who works in many spaces besides music, it’s clear Twigs gets it. It’s why the format was embedded in the titles of her early releases, and why she was keen that her last release, 2022’s Caprisongs, was categorised as a ‘mixtape’. For Twigs, an album is a statement, an experience, a curated piece of music – and the thought and detail that goes into each of hers almost guarantees quality. And even though Caprisongs was a bit underwhelming by my reckoning, Eusexua, her third LP, has all the indicators of another great work. A danceable Twigs record, steeped in the icy electronic production of her early 2010s run, with an experiential, sci-fi concept? Yes please.

The first thing to say is that it very much delivers in the sound aspect. ‘Drums of Death’ is a particular highlight. The bombastic percussion delivers on its titular threat; the drums are so dominant that Koreless, an executive producer on this album, gets a feature credit. But the most striking aspect of this album’s sound, is how many previously unexplored passages it goes down. ‘Girl Feels Good’ and ‘Perfect Stranger’ bring back the sound of millennium-era warped pop and 2-step rhythms, but in a way that doesn’t feel like a pastiche – more a sound that feels both retro and futuristic. ‘Room of Fools’ and ‘Striptease’ are both songs that start down one path and end up at a very different place with thrillingly unexpected outros. ‘Fools’ is the more musically exploratory of the two, with its thudding techno instrumental giving way to a peculiar combination that sounds like operatic singing over the backdrop of a wound-up music box. This was the kind of musical experimentation I was hoping for, and it’s great to hear it in abundance.

But while these are fine moments, after a dozen or so listens, I can’t help but feel that Eusexua is lacking in the magic that made some of Twigs’ best releases so special. Perhaps I’m not looking for the same things in her music these days, and the novelty of a third album is different to a first or second, but the individual highs don’t match a ‘Pendulum’ or a ‘Water Me’. Instead there are songs that have parts that should add up to a greater whole than they do. The title track is a case in point. The quiet/loud dynamic of the soft vocals surrounded by a high bpm whirlwind is a great idea, but each time I replay the record, it leaves me a bit cold. ‘Sticky’ seems to interpolate LP1 songs ‘Video Girl’ and ‘Lights On’ as well as Aphex Twin’s ‘Avril 14th’. It’s a clever device that works to support the song’s narrative of cyclical life events, but the song doesn’t evoke any strong emotions of its own. And ‘Childlike Things’, with its playful expression of childhood fantasy is an interesting concept, but it actually ends up as the record’s nadir, with a pointless guest appearance by North West tipping the song into the ‘irritating’ category.

Nevertheless, it does end strongly. ‘24hr Dog’ is probably the track that has grown on me most since I first heard it. A low key but straight up expression of submissive desire, it has a killer chorus, and its subdued production actually makes it a punchy contrast to the higher tempo music that precedes it. And ‘Wanderlust’ similarly foregrounds her still-stunning vocals. The song’s early part is highly reminiscent of Frank Ocean’s Blonde closer ‘Futura Free’, with the altered vocals and acoustic backdrop, before it morphs into a beautifully sung chorus. There are few artists that express longing and deeply held feelings like Twigs, and this is another of her classic moments. The way the instrumental bubbles and builds up but never spills over only adds to the magnificence of the closing track.

So I got some magic at the end. And in fact, I’ve mentioned the majority of the album in a positive sense. Why is it then, that I feel a little down on it? I suppose we hold our favourites to a higher standard. It’s the poisoned chalice of great artists. What would be considered exceptional from an unexpected source is downgraded to merely ‘good’ when we expect greatness. Plenty have called Eusexua great of course. It is undoubtedly a good album. Maybe I just wanted too much. I read too much into the experience: both in the past with Twigs’ music, and into the album blurb which describes the Eusexua concept as “the pinnacle of human experience”. Given this experiential focus, I’m seeing her live next month for the first time. Maybe that’s where it will truly hit home.

Words by Tom Burrows