FKA TWIGS GRABS THE FUTURE
The avant-R&B artist is an eccentric visionary on her masterful second album
An afro-futurist Kate Bush with some visionary avant-pop ideas, FKA Twigs went from music-video backing dancer to among the most electric of electronic pop acts five years ago with her debut, LP1. On Magdalene, her long-brewing follow-up, she goes next-level, making music that resists being pinned by genre — or even as merely music, so essential is choreography, filmmaking, and photography to what she does. Few current artists (Beyoncé and Björk come to mind) have made the visual feel so integral to their sound.
That’s certainly not to say Magdalene comes up short musically; the sound’s rich enough to conjure kaleidoscopic dreams with closed eyes. The multitracked vocals of “Thousand Eyes” begin like medieval music in a song about separation that, rather than leave the singer alone, leaves her in a frightening crowd of people, or personas. “Home With You” is a whispered piano-ballad rap with a shout-out to the album’s biblical namesake and the sneered observation that you’ve “never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi.” On “Sad Day,” she spins an earworm melody with her breathy avian soprano and high-tea phrasing over murky beat fractals that burst and recede. The psychedelic R&B of “Holy Terrain,” featuring Future, is a creative pile-on also shaped by Jack Antonoff, Skrillex, Sounwave, and Le Mystére des Voix Bulgares, the Bulgarian choral group, who get looped into a haunting sort of trap pygmy chant. It takes nothing from the originality of Twigs’ work that you can hear echoes of Kate Bush, as well as lyrical nods to “Running Up That Hill” and “This Woman’s Work,” gestures that by now should be equated to architects referencing gothic doorways or rappers paraphrasing Biggie — an art form’s foundational bedrock. Ditto for the whiff of Radiohead’s “Pyramid Song” in the meditative opening piano chords of “Fallen Alien,” which shifts in and out of a cacophony of grime beats, a seesaw of EDM, and distressed chamber music.
Twigs’ lyrics conjure struggles, which one imagines she’s had plenty of recently, between major surgery and a public breakup with Robert Pattinson. But like her U.K. peer Charli XCX, she has the support of a smartly curated, collaborative team: Nicolas Jaar, Benny Blanco, and Oneohtrix Point Never, among others. But the music runs counter to mainstream pop groupthink; Magdalene sounds like the eccentric product of a single pair of hands — like the ones you see in the pole-dancing-themed video for “Cellophane,” hoisting herself up, always toward new discovery.