FKA twigs blazes toward the pinnacle of human experience on EUSEXUA

Photo by Jordan Hemingway.

“A state of being. A feeling of momentary transcendence often evoked by art, music, sex, and unity,” reads the PVC outer sleeve that houses physical copies of FKA twigs’ third LP EUSEXUA. “Eusexua can be followed by a surge of bliss and feelings of limitless possibility. Also used to refer to: the pinnacle of human experience.” This message, written in pink ink atop the shrink-wrapped 12” x 12” sleeve, serves as the English songstress’ guiding thesis for all of the record’s meandering, introspective pondering. The album follows the scary, liberating and needed pursuit of this pinnacle of human experience through 11 sonic pillars, with each differing thematically and emotionally to deliver a vivid snapshot of the singer’s own journey toward eusexua. 

Opening with the record’s soft-spoken title track, twigs asks her listener “Do you feel alone?,” before assuring, “No, you're not alone.” Her airy delivery eases the listener into the journey to follow, setting the stage for all of the catharsis to come. The fuzzed-out synth that closes the track evokes the incandescent blinking of a light bulb fighting to maintain its spark — the same sort of spark that one often relishes among the monotony that can pervade life. 

EUSEXUA tracks the hunt for personal breakthroughs along the rocky roads that those journey’s often start on. Twigs guides her listener as if she’s their trip-sitter on a transcendental trek into the unknown, with the hope of shedding the weight of sadness, confusion and trauma. With her guiding hand outstretched, she walks her listener through assurances that there is in fact solace in feeling lost at sea, and reminds them that “You’ve one life to live, do it freely.” 

Across the album, twigs chases a life free from the perils brought on by the malice of others, but also asserts accountability for her own part in the “overcomplicated moments” that seem to feel inescapable. On “Sticky,” she expels out her contemplations while both sampling Aphex Twin’s “Avril 14” and calling back to the skittering pulse of her own “Lights On” from 2014’s LP1 (“I tried to fuck you with the lights on/In the hope you'd think I'm open”). “I want to release myself from the pain I have inside/My body wants to be touched in the deepest and darkest places,” she whispers out from behind misty vocal effects in the song’s bridge. 

Throughout twigs’ career, she has often enlisted vocal effects to not only keep listeners on their toes but to also further extract impact from her words. Her performance on EUSEXUA at times breaks through to the center of the listener’s ear, unrestricted by effects and rawer than one may be used to hearing her (“Room of Fools”). Moments later, she may change her mind and conceal her soft coo while laying out her darkest anxieties (“Sticky”). 

One of the the record’s most obvious influences is most crystalline on “Girl Feels Good,” which sounds straight out of the sessions for Madonna’s 1998 album Ray of Light, complete with creamy-smooth synth pulses evocative of a pitched-down submarine sonar system. 

Twigs chants spontaneously on “Childlike Things” alongside North West, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian’s eldest daughter, who delivers a verse of her own, praising Jesus entirely in Japanese. Despite no clear rhyme or reason for featuring the 11-year-old (other than, you know, featuring a child to emphasize the song’s title), the number is invigoratingly jumpy — even if it does seem as random as Gwen Stefani’s “Harajuku Girls” or Avril Lavigne’s “Hello Kitty.”  

Yet for all of the fun EUSEXUA offers, twigs delivers just as much rumination. Concealed behind the physical LP’s shrink-wrap is a fold-out lyric pamphlet, with a tiny inscription dedicating the album to, “all survivors of abuse. That light inside your chest, keep it and hold it.” As publicly documented in twigs’ high-profile lawsuit against former partner Shia LeBeouf for sexual battery, assault and emotional distress, the singer’s own journey through the shock waves that physical and emotional abuse leaves is detectable throughout EUSEXUA. Though packed with danceable hooks and the thud of 808s, the record offers two listening experiences — one that allows the listener to simply dance alongside the immaculately detailed production, and another that allows an intense and bare examination of the artist’s path forward.

Atop the thick, heavy bass and trap drums of “Striptease,” lines like “I’m stripping my heart till my pain disappears,” transform a club-worthy cut into a double-edged sword of a song that carries a far deeper resonance than clear on first listen. On “Keep It, Hold It,” she confesses, “I often look at windows for escape/To be safe (To be safe)/I read a million people feel this way.” In these moments, her pain festers and bubbles briefly. In others, it is released among anonymous crowds “just bleeding out the pressure,” in a harmonious collective catharsis (“Room of Fools”). If one goes looking for intricacies past the untrained ear’s abilities, EUSEXUA brims with emotional and sonic multitudes beyond comprehension.

FKA twigs’ 10 date EUSEXUA tour begins in March in the Czech Republic before making its way to the U.S. later that month.