Eleven months after releasing EUSEXUA, her love letter to the club and sensual motion, FKA twigs has returned with EUSEXUA Afterglow, a musical extension of her January album. Originally intended to be a deluxe version of EUSEXUA, Afterglow became its own work. Afterglow builds an unfamiliar, and, at times, uncomfortable universe. It is not earthly, nor human. Yet Twigs, against this alien backdrop, dives deep into some of the most excruciating elements of being a human, singer, and woman.
Love Crimes
Without leaving a moment to take a breath, Twigs pulls listeners into the loud, thumping atmosphere she is well known for.
The high-voltage instrumental, produced by RougeHotel, Manni Dee, and FKA twigs herself, is beautifully and entirely Twigs-esque. Reverberating kick drum, roaring bass line, and a wide clap are staples of her sound, but are not unique to her as an artist.
What sets Twigs’ beats apart, is the details. In the intro to the intro of Love Crimes (it has two intros), just before the chugging bass commences, a sound reminiscent of a creature from Ridley Scott’s Alien series ticks listeners into the lyrical portion.
Her vocal melodies and lyrics come across similarly to those of Addison Rae and Charli XCX: powerful, independent, and dripping with club lust. Twigs understands the market, and she knows how to make a hit.
Slushy
This song feels like putting Dolly Parton on a Ken Carson beat.
While not bad, it stands out from the rest of the album in concept. This song does everything it wants, and that may be its problem (it doesn’t want much).
“A honeycomb. A bowl of rice. A shoulder,” (pause for jungle chops), “To rest upon. Accoutrements.” The best, yet, very unfortunate, way to describe this song is strong filler. Slushy is good, and has all the makings of a great dance tune. But where it lacks in coherence with the album, it also lacks in lyrical excitement, and instrumentation.
There’s no question that Manni Dee put his all into the production of this beat, but it simply is not FKA twigs. And when vocals feel out of place and the lyrics are scattered, the song feels out of place.
Wild And Alone (feat. PinkPantheress)
We are back. The technically stimulating Twigs juice gets pumped back up to the max in the tertiary track of the album with PinkPantheress.
What is most captivating about FKA twigs music is the portions where we, mere humans, think we detect a flaw in the bass melody. On several occasions throughout this song, the bass seems to creep out of key. Yet, when listening to the song in total, the concept of “key” feels institutional, and the ideal of musicality feels irrelevant.
The song is great because it plays with something beyond art, beyond politics and beyond culture: it plays with self-awareness. FKA twigs and PinkPantheress exchange bars on this song, and at nearly no point can you tell who is who.
But it doesn’t matter, because a pop star is a pop star; a DJ is a DJ; and a British, underground, post-techno electronic grime-house musician, is whoever she wants to be.
HARD
If there is one blanket compliment that can be bestowed upon FKA twigs, it is that her beat selection is impeccable. Mechatok, who just wrapped up a month-long tour with artist 2hollis, is credited as the producer of HARD, and this beat is special.
Unlike Slushy, Mechatok’s instrumental is perfectly suited for FKA twigs’ extraterrestrial-vocalist-meets-sensual-clubgoer voice. Of all the hits on this album, HARD does one thing the best: hypnotism. The song is enchanting, constantly luring listeners deeper and deeper into the world Twigs is creating.
I imagine swirling frutiger-aero imagery, tall waterfalls of crystal white rapids, and a maestro, conducting the piercing piano that rings out in the song’s intro. Through the clouds, a voice sings out, “Would you do it if I didn’t ask you? Would you give me your love totally? Totally, I need your hard love in my life.”
Hard love, she sings. Not “love’s hard,” we’ve heard that. Hard. Love.
Cheap Hotel
After spending enough time in the club, Twigs decides it’s time to have some fun elsewhere.
The song’s beat sounds as if Tame Impala had spent a winter in 1990s London, immersed in the grimy garage scene. It is a spacey vibe, with long drawn out pad chords, crunchy drums, and a vocal chop (courtesy of New Zealand based rapper lilbubblegum) that is repeated throughout the song primarily as a percussive element.
The key to understanding this song is found in the story it tells. The slow tempo changes, the sparsely placed lilbubblegum vocal, the repetitive lyrics; the song feels uncertain.
Why uncertain? Because we’re not in the club anymore, where the four on the floor kick can keep us grounded in something we know (and can easily dance to). Now, we’re turning up in the cheap hotel right behind the club. “In room twenty or twenty four.”
Touch a Girl
Continuing the theme of discontinuity, producers Kelvin Krash and Manni Dee give us a collage of beats in Touch A Girl.
The first, a slow, prancing synthesizer accompanied by a strong 808. They move us into an extremely energetic Jersey-club break. These two repeat twice, before a cinematic bass overrides the 808. The form of this song’s instrumental is everywhere at once, and, of course, that’s the point.
Piercing through the erratic music of Krash and Dee, Twigs gives a masterclass in discursive annihilation. Speaking to the unknown subject of this song, Twigs says the lines, “You’ve got body, mind control. Got me spinning, carousel. You’re so clever, but you still don’t know… How to touch a girl.”
She throws this person a bone with the line, “Physically, compatible,” but circles back around to clarify, “Emotionally… Detestable.”
Predictable Girl
In Predictable Girl, Twigs gets emo.
She chastises herself in the opening two bars for being overly protective of her true self, “No one knows who you are, and I find that so frustrating. You’re more awkward than a stop-start animation.”
The song sounds raw and distorted, reflecting the feelings evoked in the process of coming to terms with the bad habit of hiding an identity. Raw is vulnerable and vulnerable is real.
It should be obvious by now that Twigs couldn’t just make a run-of-the-mill “looking inwards” song. So, to juxtapose the heavy realness of the song’s lyrical content, Twigs hops on a beat that sounds like it was plucked from the soundtrack of a 2000s racing game. It’s fun, aggressive, and loud, a stark contrast to the excruciating emotional turmoil the song’s protagonist seems to be wrestling with.
Sushi
“Don’t wanna make it all ‘bout sex, but I like to do it sometimes.” This single line may be the best summary of this album anyone could give.
It takes confidence (liquid or otherwise) to put a club banger, a sexy R&B break, and a vogueing anthem all in one song. But the chest pumping, floor quaking, and adrenaline blasting this song evokes is a testament to both FKA twigs and Precious’ (who makes an uncredited feature) understanding of musical energy. Going back to back, Precious and Twigs trade conflicting promises about taking the other out, increasing the conviction of the early line, “I wanna take you out,” to, “I’m gonna, gonna (you’re never gonna, gonna).”
This song is a shock to the system in a way few artists can pull off. At this point, however, Twigs has practically trademarked unpredictability.
Piece Of Mine
What is this glitch?
This song is a drug-induced hallucination from beginning to end, and Twigs is here to show this song’s subject, “how to ride a high.” This song is a puzzle piece that fits perfectly into the EUSEXUA universe. It has all the off-putting, galactic makings of an Afterglow vignette.
While the overused “ride of our lives” bar was an unfortunately sobering moment, it was not enough to fully interrupt the trip this song takes us on.
Lost All My Friends
The plot thickens: FKA twigs is still high. So high, in fact, her last memory of being “on earth” is “spinning.”
I Lost All My Friends presents an intoxicating musical experience. With the glitching instrumental, echoing vocals, and lyrics about losing friends, memories, and minds, the delirious voyage Piece Of Mine set us on continues into this electronic mirage. In the song’s bridge, Twigs whispers the hook once before an instrumental-break sporting all of the same Y2K ornamentation HARD perfected. A stand out element of this song is its vastness.
Any effective sweaty and erotic dance song (like Touch A Girl) can musically create the effect of a cramped dance floor. This song goes another direction: a mountain range on another planet.
Twigs takes her microphone, and sings a very human story that echoes throughout the celestial peaks.
Stereo Boy
As the title suggests, this song does play very wide.
Twigs, taking a note from Charli XCX perhaps, leans in and enunciates her punky British accent, serving a perfect complement to the cinematic beat that backs her up. With production credits from Illangelo and Doc Mckinney, both longtime collaborators with the Weeknd, Stereo Boy was destined to be a hit.
The clean guitar that rings throughout the song, conflicts with the buzzing synths, a musical metaphor for pursuing someone who simply is not on your frequency. Pursuing a lover who runs like a stereo, constantly switching social frequencies, certainly doesn’t sound pleasant.
Stereo Boy is a tragedy, and the production makes that abundantly clear. Unable to keep up with her lover’s fast lifestyle, an attempt to match pace culminates in the line, “I’ll let you drive me off the edge, if I can land in your oils.”
