On EUSEXUA FKA twigs Searches For The High

Graphic by Sofia Giarrusso

by bennett Himmel

FKA twigs has gone on record to say that she likes to hone a new skill any time that she’s working on a new album. For her groundbreaking debut, 2014’s LP1, she learned to vogue. For her generational follow up, MAGDALENE, she learned both pole dancing and wushu. On her newest offering, EUSEXUA, the skill is a bit more heady. She says that she’s developed a new theoretical framework for how to live one’s life in a state of eusexua. Eusexua, she says, is the moment when we stop thinking: the moments just after we wake, the moment before orgasm, the moment before the beat drops. She’s developed eleven pillars of eusexua, each reflected in all eleven tracks on this new album. Twigs has been teasing this album as a rave album, inspired by a period of time spent healing in Prague. On every track, over minimalist trance production and constantly evolving arrangements, it’s like FKA twigs is asking the listener: when was the last time you felt eusexua?

On the opener and title track, Twigs lays out what eusexua really is. “Words can not describe, baby / This feeling deep inside,” she coos over twinkly production. Produced by English musician Koreless along with Twigs herself, “Eusexua” allows itself to transform and sprawl in a big-budget pop way she’s never been afforded before. The song starts off with a microscopic beep, slowly giving way to a chugging tidal wave of sub bass in the song’s climax. It’s one of the album’s finest moments. EUSEXUA is all about these instances where a track suddenly explodes and becomes something completely new. On the Björk-indebted “Room Of Fools,” she growls the song title before hard, four-on-the-floor production flows in.

There’s been lots of talk online about EUSEXUA being, let me try and explain this, “reheating Madonna’s Ray of Light nachos.” For the non-chronically online, this essentially means that Twigs is clearly taking inspiration from Madonna’s trancey, downtempo 1998 album of the same name. On one level, I think that’s, to quote Madge herself, reductive. Lyrically, EUSEXUA is less about finding peace and looking inward than sweating in a giant warehouse with all the non-binary blue-haired baristas of the world. However, on the track “Girl Feels Good,” the nachos have been perfectly reheated. This is to say that it’s a near-perfect recreation of that sound. Over trip-hop production, Twigs waxes poetic about feeling validated, beautiful, and sexually liberated. It’s one of Twigs’ sexiest songs, and if you know anything about her discography, that’s saying something.

Speaking of sexy songs, “Striptease” may be the album’s strongest moment. The song has a booming, bizarre, trap-inspired beat, over which Twigs gives a vocal performance we’ve never really heard from her before. “I’m BORderline, it’s GETting late, I FEEL alive, I WAnna show you aHaHaHaHaH,” she groans, punctuating every other syllable with an alien yowl. The track is somewhat reminiscent of Eartheater’s 2019 mixtape Trinity until the song switches into a drum and bass breakdown in its final leg, Twigs doing her best Dolores O’Riordan impression. It’s transcendent, and perhaps the first moment on the album where I truly felt eusexua.

All of these giant, poppy, ravey moments make the album’s soft, tender songs all the more powerful. “Sticky,” which may as well interpolate Aphex Twin’s iconic “Avril 14th,” is a masterpiece. “I tried to fuck you with the lights on / In the hope you’d think I’m open / And have a conversation,” she confesses over stuttering piano. Her vocal performance is, as always, incredibly strong, and the production fits her like a glove. “24hr Dog” is, on its surface, about sexual submission, but it’s more about how good and relieving it can feel to relinquish power in our most vulnerable moments. “Please don’t call my name / When I submit to you this way / I’m a dog forrrrr youuuuuuu,” she swoons, before letting out an animalistic howl. It’s beautiful.

All this praise is not to say that EUSEXUA does not have its confounding, unfortunate moments. “Childlike Things,” while admittedly fun, makes pretty much zero sense on the album. The production reminds me of French house, while the chorus is so childlike it can border on grating. And that’s not even mentioning the North West (yes, that North West) feature in which the eleven-year old praises Jesus in Japanese. The closer, “Wanderlust,” feels like Twigs is invoking Blond-era Frank Ocean, but with more autotune and a staggering lack of lyrical depth. The song feels limp and makes no sense as a closer to such a brilliant, shimmering, emotionally intelligent body of work.

FKA twigs’ previous albums were landmarks in their respective genres. LP1 is a core album in the alternative R&B canon, while MAGDALENE is on endless “Top 10 best albums of the 2010’s” lists. EUSEXUA, with all its brilliance,doesn’t feel like a landmark, but it does feel like a crucial evolution for Twigs. While her previous albums were emotionally heavy and at turns straight-up crushing, EUSEXUA paints a portrait of someone constantly searching for emotional highs, craving a constant state of bliss. When she sings, “You’re not alone / And if they ask you, say you feel it / But don’t call it love / Eusexua,” she’s not just singing to the listener. She’s singing to herself.