FKA twigs - Have you experienced eusexua?

Life in the provinces is hard, especially in chilly England. It could be the start of the story of any industrial band from around Sheffield, but it's a reality shared by plenty of artistically sensitive souls. Take Tahliah Debrett Barnett, born in Cheltenham, a small town in Gloucestershire halfway between Bristol and Birmingham. Sure, school (a private Catholic institute with opera and ballet courses) and family background (a dancer and gymnast mother, a jazz-loving stepfather) can provide a decisive imprint, encouraging talents to surface early. But the fact remains that living in a far-flung little town does very little to help you find your place, or properly nurture your inner voice.

Off we go, then, with the simplest and at the same time hardest decision possible: leaving your hometown behind and heading for the capital, before even coming of age. It's 2005, dance-punk fever is raging around London, and the club scene too is undergoing deep changes, from the evolutions of Ministry Of Sound to the ever more forceful rise of Dubstep and its related languages. Amid this climate, a seventeen-year-old Barnett takes her first steps into the scene, initially focusing on her skills as a dancer, managing to enrol at the prestigious Brit School (the school that produced the likes of Adele, Amy Winehouse, Katy B) and carving out a place among the throng of characters and talents attending the institute. It will be a gradual emergence, a wavering flow between her primary passion and the ever more pressing desire to find her own voice in music-making too.

Dancing undeniably lets her build a profile as a backup dancer for major pop stars and names riding high at the time (she appears in videos by Kylie Minogue, Jessie J, Ed Sheeran, even in a parody of Beyoncé for the BBC), but her interest in writing and production, kept hidden until then, starts to surface forcefully, expressed in the form of "really awful demos" and sketches that will need time to find their way.

Space, the only thing I ever knew

From the Brit School Barnett then moves on to Croydon College to begin a course of study in the fine arts, and meanwhile takes her first serious steps as a singer. It's here, during her appearances around the clubs of Soho, that the stage name emerges which from then on will be her calling card. From the clicking sound of her joints, Barnett starts being called Twigs: straight to the point, effective, the nickname hits home, becoming both a banner and an armour for the young woman, who is meanwhile putting together her first musical project. For the occasion she leaves nothing to chance, and above all she immediately shows off what will become a guiding principle of her career: released monthly, with each track accompanied by its own video, EP1 immediately flaunts the musician's multimedia versatility, a personal touch that moves comfortably across sound, use of voice, choreography and visuals.

What speaks loudest, though, is the solidity of the sonic architecture: in just four tracks, the Twigs universe already presents itself as well-defined and personal, caught at the crossroads of an electronic climate crackling with different expressive currents. The influences of the Dubstep era are pulverised into a sea of bass outlines, as shown by the digital anthem "Ache", built around the vocal ostinato of its refrain, which recalls the minimalist experiments of Laurie Anderson. The weight of the bass becomes a central element in how the tracks are handled, whether it's the wonky of "Weak Spot", all slithering undercurrents and secret whispers, or the dub asymmetries of "Hide", a two-part track in which the verse, armed with psychedelic guitar, and the chorus, a slow intonation over an incessant ticking clock, give the whole song an air of pure mystery.

Barnett's voice already proves to be an essential asset at this stage: a light, airy soprano capable of taking on the emotional weight of the best r&b vocalists while also plunging into depth and becoming a kind of priestess, a mouthpiece for a vibrant, evocative femininity (as "Breathe" perfectly distils). Perhaps that subversive melodic character that marks her more mature work is still missing, but the Twigs project starts out on solid footing: EP1 is a compelling starting point to build future work on.

He won’t make love to me now, not now I’ve set the fee

Meanwhile the world around her starts taking notice of Twigs, as the EP's videos, with their pop vignettes (the anthurium flower covering Barnett's legs in "Hide") and their video-art quality (the surgical destruction of a vehicle for "Breathe", the instinctive choreography of "Hide"), do the rounds among fans, to the point that the musician lands her first cover for i-D magazine. The world takes notice to such an extent that The Twigs, an indie-pop duo of twin sisters from Chicago active since 1994, ask Barnett to change her name. No sooner said than done: with the addition of three letters, the creature FKA twigs (the T strictly lowercase) takes shape, never to be altered again. There's no reference to "formerly known as", as one might primarily assume. Barnett was simply interested in using letters that gave the whole moniker some solidity, with no particular hidden meaning.

From total creative independence comes quickly a deal with Young (then still called Young Turks), and just eight months after the release of EP1, a new cycle of four tracks gets underway, each again paired with its own video. Laconically titled EP2, underlining its kinship with its direct predecessor, the work once again places Barnett at the crossroads of different sensibilities, thoroughly modern in the way they juggle the new r&b winds blowing from both sides of the Atlantic, the sharp edges of the post-Dubstep era, and the fire of an electronic spiral able to make the barest minimalism sound colossal. Without mincing words, "Papi Pacify", the project's second track, accompanied by a video as brilliant as it is disturbing, marks an early turning point in Barnett's career, with hindsight standing as one of the defining moments of 2013. Not only for its ability to speak to the present like few other tracks of the period, but above all for carrying within it the seeds of what would later become the future of the genre.

The secret to such dialogue? Enlisting the crystalline production of Arca, a producer who at the time had taken his first steps in the major circuits thanks to the considerable buzz stirred up by his involvement in Kanye West's "Yeezus". Working alongside Barnett on the writing of the tracks, he brings airiness and total freedom in handling dynamics and timing, lending great ease to the way it exploits the alternation of fullness and emptiness typical of a James Blake, in a sonic blend that draws as much from trip-hop as from the sharpest developments in bass music. On top of all this there's Twigs's agility in handling the building blocks of the pop song, in dosing the track's fragmented melodic cadences to her liking, and it's easy to understand the reason for the immediate pull the song exerts.

Thankfully there's enough substance in the rest of the tracks for them not to come across as mere filler. From the Bristolian beat of "How's That", which doesn't shy away from contamination with the r&b fragmentations of the Lapalux school, to the minimal bones of "Water Me", another great vocal performance from the singer (a soul touch turning into a pagan hymn), the variety and sturdiness of the material ("Ultraviolet" closes things out in a haze that fuses ambient-pop with glitch through a future-garage-style weave) open up new, intriguing scenarios ahead of her forthcoming projects.

Pull out the incisor, give me two weeks you won’t recognize her

Four songs, striking videos, a sharp aesthetic, precise in its contours yet aware it can go beyond them: a steady buzz has by now built up around the name FKA twigs, her profile gets included in trade and mainstream magazines among the names to watch for 2014, the BBC shortlists her for the Sound Of 2014, the annual award that identifies potential new talents to keep an eye on. Even without winning it, anticipation stays high for a debut album that Barnett promises is coming soon. In the meantime she takes on a brilliant collaboration with inc., another name on the rise at the time within the already crowded nu-r&b scene, and sharpens her talent for producing and directing other people's tracks. All fleeting diversions that don't distract from the main goal, from the third project in three years, which in the end proves to be the deal-breaker of a trajectory on a constant rise.

Introduced by the long tracking shot that defines the video for "Two Weeks", a track of overflowing sensuality built entirely on throbbing pulses straddling industrial and r&b, and by the shibari used in the filming of "Pendulum" (among the most painful reflections on the distortions of love), LP1 arrives in August 2014 and decisively cements the solid groundwork laid by the first two EPs, thanks to a selection of tracks that brings out every creative direction Barnett has touched on.

An apparently elusive record, yet anything but lacking in elements and cues to support its interpretation, it fully satisfies the thirst for clarity by revealing itself as a work structured in every respect, from the subject matter of the lyrics to the production side, which had already shone brightly in its own right back in the days of the two EPs. In this sense, the resulting cohesion makes it altogether easier to take the album's songs to heart, bringing its trajectories, contexts and atmospheres into proper focus.

The eroticism, the pathos, the sexual drives that made up the lyrical fabric of Barnett's songs aren't simply amplified by the album's more expansive format, but are rather reworked, renewed, animated with a new vitality that almost seems to sanctify, elevate to liturgy the most carnal, physical of processes. R&b, suitably filtered, bastardized by swarms of electronics and sudden industrial undertows, thus becomes the expressive vehicle of choice for a ceremony officiated with the utmost engagement, an involvement that needs no grand gestures to make its mark.

It's hard, then, to even imagine a comparison, however veiled, with the other great names who helped revolutionize the scene in those years. The use of r&b becomes more than anything a pretext for bringing genres like downtempo and trip-hop up to date, stripping them of their nineties patina and offering a wholly original version, updated to the alternative movements of new electronic thinking. The ritual staged by Tahliah Barnett doesn't lend itself to a well-worn game of roles; that's past history, a moment already filed away in memory within its own jagged, complex pas de deux, where the other party, however never truly present, heavily influences the conception of the record, and not only in lyrical terms.

The experience with Arca producing EP2 proved to be a formative moment, the path to pursue and deepen with the utmost conviction, drawing on every bit of its communicative potential. And so here come voids and tensions that erupt out of nowhere, inextricable polyrhythms, bizarre fusions roaming between genres and attitudes (the dreamlike cut of "Lights On", a peak of intimacy on an album that's already overtly confessional; the almost Caribbean hints that seep through the most hidden corners of "Pendulum"). Twigs nonetheless handles the layered sonic architecture of her work with great mastery: even where the game seems to slip out of her hands, the result is an (apparent) lightness of touch, an ease that resolves sudden mood swings and stylistic about-faces into the most comforting of sighs, the warmest of whispers.

Whispers, yes: although Twigs possesses a fascinating vocal plasticity (as underlined too by the feverish vocal frescoes in the refrain of "Numbers", the most heart-wrenching emotional j'accuse of that period) and a timbral grain that can go toe to toe with a certain Aaliyah (just hear the power with which the vocal line of "Closer" takes off, among the ten tracks the one closest to so-called classic r&b), her interpretations sink so deeply into the lyrics that listening to them becomes intensely powerful, at times almost emotionally unbearable. The feminine, immensely powerful and untamable in its claim to its own identity, desires and drives, thus emerges with an underground, creeping force, making every word, every gesture weigh like a boulder on the listener.

Unsettling and at times disturbing, clear-eyed in its self-exposure yet ready to break every inhibition when necessary, LP1 is the most potent manifestation of a crystalline talent, an artist who immediately makes her exorbitant creativity unmistakably clear.

Now hold that pose for me

The success of LP1, especially on the critical side, proves to be overwhelming. As the figurehead of a new wave of artists capable of hybridizing r&b with new electronic trends (although Barnett isn't particularly thrilled with the genre comparison, calling it a convenient pairing that mostly plays on her background), the album ends up on countless year-end lists, gets nominated for the Mercury Prize, and enjoys an extensive promotional run that takes FKA twigs on a long global tour. The start of a transformation into a major pop star? Not even close: jealous of her creativity, eager to explore new sonic territories, Barnett looks ahead of herself, toward new goals for a creative drive that knows no stopping.

With 2014 wrapped up with all due honors, the new year already opens onto new challenges to face, with other faces joining those already familiar. Shortly before, Boots, chiefly responsible for producing Beyoncé's self-titled album, had already spoken of a collaboration with Twigs. In March 2015, the release of "Glass & Patron", a tribute to queer culture and post-club voguing, confirms that something substantial is brewing. Between biographically-tinged theatrical performances (the show Congregata) and cryptic Instagram announcements, the idea takes hold that "EP3" is about to drop. A few more months pass, though, before it's made official and M3LL155X (i.e. Melissa) sees the light of day. A year after the release of LP1, the project pushes Twigs's exploration even further, condensing it into five tracks with an expansive, futuristic sound.

Melissa: an impulsive, overwhelming feminine force, creative energy to draw support and guidance from, an inner power with almost divine features, a demon at first unnamed that later took on more identifiable traits. However one chooses to describe her, it's to this entity that Tahliah Barnett decided to dedicate her new work, a twenty-minute EP that breaks from the schematic naming conventions of her previous discography in favor of a title that's finally personal. The British artist looks at her most fertile self with a certain detachment, taking care to point out that it is in no way an alter ego: still, the importance of such care in choosing the subject manages to override any such reticence and bears witness to a newly acquired awareness.

A hymn to one's own creative fervor, as mentioned: never before has the urge been so strong to display it, to flaunt it with due pride, without anyone's mediation, now more superfluous than ever. For the occasion, no expense was spared: accompanying the EP is a substantial body of visuals in which Twigs unleashes all her directorial sensibility, entrusting it to a concept that illustrates, with the necessary intensity, not only the birth and growth of Melissa, but also how many reflections and ideas passed through her mind over these twelve months — if anything even more formative than those that preceded the genesis of LP1. The rise to fame, exposure to the mainstream public, feminism and femininity, dominance and desire: it hardly sounds like an exaggeration to say that through this cluster of themes Barnett found her most real and vivid voice, through a lyrical vein that tackles such subjects without sterile simplification. Hers is a dark, peremptory voice, as disturbing as the visual imagery that accompanies it, yet she's not afraid to use her own means to take on pop language, wanting to be part of it while still carrying all her own subversive charge. Thus, even as the drive toward timbral and sonic experimentation shows no sign of letting up, the five tracks on offer here lean on some of the most substantial, immediate melodic touches in the artist's catalog, who by now knows how to effectively command the most disparate means of communication.

The paths taken manage to be both reckless and intricate: "In Time", climbing on fleeting dub references, pushes the work's shadowy moodiness to its extreme consequences, branding itself with a brooding writing style perfectly matched by thunderous synth explosions and the dark seething of the bass. "Figure 8", perhaps the moment where Boots's contribution feels most evident, sharpens the process of perceptual estrangement, reinforcing the avant-garde streak of her work in a white-hot crucible where grime echoes, otherworldly rap, and synthetic chiaroscuros pile up in perfect succession, together making the already adventurous twists of LP1 seem almost routine by comparison.

Barnett is certainly not shy about revealing the breadth of registers she can draw on, deployed here without any reticence (from the furious lashing out of "In Time" to the bittersweet resignation of "I'm Your Doll", an old demo successfully reworked, with lyrics among the most merciless around), and yet her resorting to such sweeping shifts heightens an emotional charge that others would simply have flattened with ill-judged choices.

Just a few more tracks were missing for M3LL155X to be called the true pinnacle of FKA twigs, but even without greater length, it's still a statement that counts.

Intermezzo

After more than three years spent honing her art and gradually gathering ever more significant acclaim, a break from the constant album cycle was more than due. Not that the creative process stops: after the release of M3LLI55X, a stray single still comes out (a "Good To Love" in which Twigs summons her inner Sade), her interest in directing finds ever more varied outlets (from directing commercials to new theatrical productions), and she is chosen as the lead in the promotional video directed by Spike Jonze for the launch of Apple's HomePod (with music support from Anderson .Paak).

It is, in short, a far from quiet period, all the more so since Barnett is also starting to get noticed by the film world as an actress. It is, however, also a period in which her personal affairs, kept hidden until then, become public knowledge. Introduced through mutual friends, Robert Pattinson — already hugely famous after the "Twilight" saga and freshly split from co-star Kristen Stewart — is Barnett's partner for three years, from late 2014 to mid-2017. What could, on paper, have been the golden couple of the alternative world (Pattinson had already forcefully distanced himself from the vampire universe that had made him famous) instead turns into a nightmarish spiral for Twigs, who becomes the target of relentless attacks from the actor's fans, who were none too willing to see her as a partner "worthy" of their idol. A devastating wave of hatred is unleashed on her, racist comments run rampant online, and a vicious campaign of bullying builds up, with serious repercussions for the British musician herself.

It matters little that the two even went as far as an official engagement, or that the relationship seemed to carry on against all odds: the atmosphere stirred up by fans and tabloids made the situation increasingly unbearable, and Barnett went through a brutal period of crisis and poor self-acceptance, one that led, after three years, to an inevitable breakup. Yet from the harrowing end of such an emotionally devastating personal chapter, Twigs nonetheless gathered the seeds for her next work, still a long way off but already christened in the thickest, pitch-black waters. The artist, however, didn't let herself be defeated: on her Instagram profile she documented her progress in pole-dance and in the study of wushu, specifically sword practice. In the patient, month-by-month progression she showed, there emerges — if it were ever in doubt — the mettle and discipline of a creative mind that leaves nothing to chance, one with very few equals in popular music (the eternal Kate Bush being the closest point of comparison). Everything slowly builds toward a new dimension to inhabit, a space to recount in all its painful intensity.

I’m a fallen alien, I never thought that you would be the one to tie me down

Pain remains, in a way, the core of the whole period leading up to and including MAGDALENE. Early 2018 brought Barnett's announcement that, a few months earlier, she had undergone multiple laparoscopies to remove six uterine fibroids — a constant source of pain the artist had endured for years, one she feared her body might not be able to withstand, especially after the removal. Also in 2018, having met on the set of “Honey Boy”, Twigs began a relationship with Shia LaBeouf, a relationship that would end in less than a year, after the musician accused the actor — filing a lawsuit in a Los Angeles court — of sexual violence, harassment and emotional abuse.

In this terrible convergence of events, the creative process became the only weapon available to carry out her own healing, to find the redemption that circumstances refused to grant her. Only in this way could she regain confidence in herself and rein in her own expectations. The painful, harrowing four years separating M3LL155X from MAGDALENE find new balance through a physicality that is irrevocably different, an inner self shaken to its depths, in a way that opens the door to new impulses and desires. Almost a chronicle of this slow, steady path to recovery, FKA twigs' second full-length is an introspective, cathartic work that doesn't abandon the cross-genre experimentation of her earlier records, but bends it into an album of powerful symbolic weight, mature and self-aware, one that paints a formidable portrait of a woman and an artist.

Mary Magdalene, in the archetypal power of her figure and in the way her story has been manipulated over time, becomes the thematic core of an album that, rather than dwelling on the religious aspects of the question, chooses instead to focus on the figure's feminine symbolism, on the extraordinary strength of her example. A personality at once ancient and contemporary, one that has exerted and continues to exert a magnetic pull: a model of dignity and courage, whom the British artist channels through several elements of her own lived experience, a hall-of-mirrors game that reaches well beyond the lyrical surface.

Beyond this new, weighty baggage of reflection, it's the production that bears the brunt of the most significant changes: it loses none of its unclassifiable traits but becomes more enveloping, arguably more dynamic, brushing up against the avant-garde while also testing its versatility in pop territory. Once again coordinating a lavish cast of collaborators (among many others, Nicolas Jaar, Daniel Lopatin, Skrillex), Twigs once again manages to bend their attitudes and aesthetics to the service of a unified project, a singular vision, outlined with the same conviction as her previous work, but with an even more powerful connecting thread than before.

Far more focused on the interplay between lyrics and sound, the album finds Tahliah Barnett further refining her search for a form of communication capable of marrying tonal exploration with melodic richness, the power of the message with its expressive allure. This is what justifies true outliers like “Holy Terrain”, a track with clear trap inflections but a forceful R&B melodicism, heightened by the intimate yet resolute nature of the lyrics and by the fascinating lyrical exchange between the songwriter and Future. Much the same can be said of “Home With You”, a two-part track that knows exactly how to twist the knife into the eternal wound of relationships and the precarious balances that govern them. Between the martial, catatonic tone of the verses and the overwhelming warmth of the refrain — heightened in the closing section by a lavish orchestral arrangement — the full ambivalence underlying the lyrics comes through.

Elsewhere things become far more subjective, personal, aimed at uncovering the strength of a femininity that is often clipped, misunderstood, but now a source of wisdom and catharsis. The desire for healing driving “Mary Magdalene” is unmistakable, as is the awareness of a spiritual strength and an energy still unrevealed, now ready to burst forth, to unveil its mysteries. “Sad Day”, among the most accomplished melodies in her catalogue, pairs a segmented glitch/techno backbone with an interpretive tenderness that feels surprising for this artist, casting a hopeful glance toward love and its redemptive power. “Cellophane”, strategically placed at the album's close, is an excruciating ballad, carried by a beatboxed pattern and a slow murmur of piano, grappling with the dynamics of her separation from Robert Pattinson. “Fallen Alien” is its angry counterpart, an explosion that turns the rhythmic instincts of peak-era Björk inside out and transfigures them into a sinister design, almost as if to claim vengeance against a harm endured for far too long as though it were simply normal. Barnett thus reveals the true character of her art, whose intensity only comes out stronger for all the hardships endured over those four years.

Switch it up and don’t stop

After the nearly universal acclaim granted to MAGDALENE and a stellar tour, during which she had the chance to showcase her progress in pole-dance and wushu (alongside elaborate group choreography), Barnett didn't rest: finding herself with plenty of energy to spare, and with a pandemic that gave everyone far more free time, she carried on promoting her second album digitally and revealed she was already at work on a new project. The prevailing mood? Serene, playful, deeply collaborative. The healing process set in motion while conceiving her second album reached full fruition from 2020, and especially in 2021, revealing an FKA twigs at ease with herself, buoyed by the warmth and affection of fellow artists and assorted talents.

Announced repeatedly throughout 2021 but then pushed back due to a name change and various soundtrack appearances (her “Measure Of A Man” was among the tracks chosen for “The King’s Man”), the project — released right around Barnett's birthday and renamed for the occasion Caprisongs — completely upends expectations about what a Twigs project, and the moods it might convey, could be. She had rediscovered herself, distant from (though not oblivious to) past pain, surrounded by the warmth of affectionate friends and the hum of conversations as small as they were meaningful to her. Finding comfort in trusted people is a fortunate thing, and it's to them, to their energy and their support, that Twigs dedicates her first mixtape, one that tastes of life breathed in with full lungs, of a euphoria that finds its true cornerstone in inclusion, in a spirit of collaboration. In a creative process opened up for the first time to a dense crew of fellow musicians and friends, the project proves curious, leaping from one style to another, inviting us to (re)discover an artist now simply eager to have fun.

Although distributed by Young via Atlantic, complete with a substantial launch video for “Tears In The Club” featuring The Weeknd, the project reveals right away its far looser nature, in a sense its desire to play with the colours and constructs of today's mainstream landscape. The game, though not without its rough edges and Barnett's own characteristically oblique attitude, is purest pop distilled, bent each time to a different aesthetic or to specific collaborative needs. The sense of curiosity is undeniable, as is the deeply emotional character of the songs, yet the impression one comes away with is one of deep confusion, of a lack of centre of gravity that the exceptional variety on display does nothing to resolve. Add to this the numerous spoken interludes from friends and fans, as well as entirely inconsequential skits, and the sense of disorientation only grows.

The connective tissue provided by Barnett and El Guincho's executive coordination does very little, in short, to bring together such a crowd of voices and producers (a returning Arca, Koreless and Sega Bodega among many others), or to make the driving afroswing of Nigerian star Rema (“Jealousy”) coexist under the same roof with the brazen cadences of Shygirl (the freeze-dried Caribbean of “Papi Bones”), the hip-hop swagger of Pa Salieu (“Honda”), and the soul passion of Jorja Smith (the bedroom-trap of “Darjeeling”, which lifts the chorus of Olive's “You’re Not Alone”).

Even the songwriting, always a focal element of Twigs' art, loses much of its drive here, settling into a slackness that rarely pushes beyond the lowest common denominator. It's worth noting, in fairness, that the project's promotional rollout made clear from the start its looser, in its own way home-made nature. Freed from the far harsher thematic frameworks of her key records, with Caprisongs Tahliah Barnett celebrates herself, her own universe, an exuberant rebirth, one best read through a more playful, looser disposition.

And if they ask you, say you feel it, but don’t call it love

However off-the-cuff, however deliberately outside the main distribution circuit, Caprisongs reached places none of her previous records had reached. Whether due to its greater accessibility or its many high-profile features, FKA twigs scored her first chart placements in unlikely countries (New Zealand), her name reaching places it had never managed to reach before. This isn't necessarily the path Barnett is interested in pursuing, but the backing of a major label and so many collaborators finally unlocked the situation, including on the songwriting front. Her creativity, in any case, never wavered: the musician worked through demo after demo (only one of which would see its finished form, “Killer”, a rhythm'n'bass tune perfectly in line with the mixtape's leanings), and by mid-2023 had more than 80 tracks stashed away, ready to be worked on.

After two successful appearances — the first at Vogue World in mid-September 2023, where she performed Opus III's “It’s A Fine Day” alongside Cara Delevingne, and the second at the Valentino show during Paris Fashion Week just two weeks later (where she performed “Unearth Her”, a track written with Koreless) — a string of Instagram Stories quickly followed, in which Barnett revealed that the demos she had been working on had leaked. The frustration was palpable: what had looked like a straight road toward the new album hit a serious snag, with Twigs announcing that the release date for her long-awaited third album would be pushed back indefinitely.

The wait wasn't too long in the end, despite the gloomy forecasts: in August of the following year, Barnett announced the new record, set for release in January 2025. In the meantime, she revealed the album's title, EUSEXUA, and began promoting the title track, the lead single that introduced the world to the neologism and all its semantic layers.

Have you experienced eusexua? Have you ever felt that rush of euphoria that hits you right before an extraordinary revelation, a great idea? A kind of distillation of life itself, an exceptional lift of mind and senses: FKA twigs' third album, fittingly titled with her own spot-on neologism, aims to pin down this state of being – "the pinnacle of human experience," in the musician's own words – in an all-encompassing sonic package, the offspring of both brazen electronics and a newly acquired love for pop language. Losing yourself in such rapture turns out to be easier than expected.

Electronic music and pop, then: the curious, wandering approach of LP1 and M3LL155X merged with the major-label sheen offered by Caprisongs. Add in generous doses of affection and memory (the whole album has been described as a long love letter to dance music and club culture) and you pinpoint precisely the hinges, the building blocks on which the entire eusexua project turns. Rather than truly marking a move toward the dancefloor, the album reflects on the impact the dancefloor has had on Twigs, on its liberating potential, on the process of discovery it entailed. So, aside from "Room Of Fools," a technoid chapter drawn from the Björk of her first two albums, and "Drums Of Death," a moment all sharp edges and percussion entrusted to the skilled hand of Koreless, the beat appears obliquely, often as a later revelation, the ideal complement to a heightened sense of introspection. No track makes these choices more explicit than the title track. Already a classic in Twigs' catalogue, it builds with clever sophistication, letting the musician's nimble vocal take the lead, ushering us into the album's universe, into the ineffability of a concept that only sound can truly convey. Once the pulse builds, surfacing from the underground where it had been lurking, everything catches fire, turning into a powerful trance epiphany, the realization of boundless enthusiasm.

"Keep It, Hold It" moves with similarly ambitious intent, a Bush-like mini-suite in which the pastoral opening gives way to a mighty jungle-inflected break, which sweeps through and clears everything in its path, before the coda lets the tide roll back in, resolving the turbulence into a slow choral fade-out.

It's a shame that an album capable of reviving the glories of "Ray Of Light," of capturing the best of its alluring downtempo lesson, then veers off into flat, generic pop territory or relies on features that are, to put it mildly, questionable. Major-label pressure? For a track like "Childlike Things," accompanied by the vocal antics of eleven-year-old North West, one is more inclined to suspect a deliberate joke. In the end these are minor stumbles, given that most of the tracklist looks elsewhere, but the fact remains that such a concept, such an impetuous hunger for life, could easily have gone toe to toe with the two previous albums, with a bit more editing. Still, the clear impression is of a new step forward, of an enthusiasm that, we're certain, will keep paying dividends for a long time to come.

You’re a star, you’re a waterfall, shining your light on everybody

Announced just eight months later and arriving alongside a curious reissue of her third album, EUSEXUA Afterglow is the natural conceptual continuation of its sibling record, a project written and composed by Barnett with unusual speed, which gathers and distills the descent from the heights of exaltation – "the broken glass, the chaos within perfection" – turning the pinnacle of human experience into its own negative of shadow and crystal, where the electronic material works in extremes of timbre and rhythm, carving out a mood that is as hazy as it is deeply physical.

In this suspended afterglow it's Twigs the producer who comes out on top: even more than in the Prague-indebted homages of its immediate predecessor, this new project shows Barnett at ease with the most varied facets of a composite sound, unafraid to roam at will between old-school UK garage, the more cerebral side of IDM, flickers of r&b and even distant Bristol-sound temptations. "Wild And Alone," featuring a more understated-than-usual PinkPantheress, pushes forcefully back against a pull toward isolation and self-destruction, over a bed that scatters trance motifs into a thousand bass offshoots. "Hard" goes even further, becoming both warning and plea, a gauntlet thrown down to a hypothetical lover who is pure funk seduction, woven from narcotic textures and street attitude. While "Love Crimes" opens the listen with a technoid assault, perfect for turning tension into action, "Sushi" takes the biggest slice of the pie, positioning itself as a kind of spiritual heir to "Glass & Patron," a ballroom track of the future introduced by a cavernous dance mechanism, as playful as it is relentless.

If the sound comes across as varied and engaging, the same can't be said of the songwriting: often halting, at times intangible (the hazy trip-hop of "Cheap Hotel," all loops and chipmunk-pitched vocals, is the prime example), Barnett's pen struggles to land the punch, hemmed in as it is by breathless run times or lost in tired urban modulations (the lackluster return to LP1-style atmospheres on "Piece Of Mine"). It's a tendency that runs through the entire second half, where the comedown grows sharper, dragging along feelings of abandonment and despondency. There's still too much fog, too much confusion for the loss of friends, for the surrounding indifference, to truly cut through the still-clouded senses. Coming down from the peaks of euphoria is hard work: once you do, you risk ending up face down on some sidewalk.

Through her constant, shrewd shifts in style, through the ever bolder evolutions of her concepts, FKA twigs confirms, step by step, the overwhelming force of her character, the stature and authority of an art that grows ever more alive, breathed in and inspired to its fullest capacity. A true alien, fallen to Earth from who knows where, but ready to share the strength of her testimony.

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