Searching for an Afterglow? A Review
Design by Diego Gonzalez
BY AVERY PIAZZA
EUSEXUA is the moment. Afterglow is the chaos that follows. The anarchic comedown of promise and mourning. Your head is still in the clouds, but your feet have landed on the ground. This album grows on you like the smudge of eyeliner after a long night, proof of evolution out of experience. Then it stays with you like the rhinestone you find behind your ear on a Tuesday. Afterglow, the sister album to EUSEXUA, continues the conceptual design of the FKA twigs universe. twigs is notorious for reinventing herself with each album, pushing the boundaries of her artistic experimentation in both sound and movement. Afterglow is the first release without a “new” twigs, but a continuation of the twigs she has spent the last two years building—it is arguably one of the strongest musical campaigns of our time. This record takes time to hook you, but put yourself on the city streets at 4 a.m. and you’ll be overcome with a glow of sorts.
Listening to this album is like a choose-your-own adventure map that begins when the fluorescent lights come up. A map of post-club journeys. Each song is full of sensual and visceral bodily sensations– a muscle flexing and expanding–characteristic of her deeply intertwined musicianship and movement art. twigs comes at her music from her body, as though they are one and not a result of the other. Most songs end in a breakdown of sorts, almost always requiring a coda, a typical trait in twigs’ music. Throughout the night, twigs travels from lover to lover, moaning pure sex and physical freedom in tracks like “Predictable Girl,” and “HARD,” which is an inarguable highlight of the record. She echoes past lovers and zipcoders in “Love Crimes” and “Sushi” all while sprinkling in body-high sensations. “Relax your sweet mind / Baby let me show you how to ride the high,” she moans in “Piece of Mine.” The self-explanatory afters of the album’s single, “Cheap Hotel,” makes a name for itself through its distinct structure.
The most ambitious track of the album is “Sushi,” which serves as a sort of epic. Beginning slow and romantic, the track builds into a flow reminiscent of Caprisongs’ “Honda,” while nodding to her 2015 single, “Glass and Patron”: “Now hold that pose for me.” This line kicks off the magnetic breakdown over vocal commands by Precious. “Sushi” feels like an homage to the evolution of twigs paying tribute to her past selves in the style of her current state. “Lost All My Friends” simulates the moment of chaos when the first taste of the night air hits your lungs, evocative of the alternation between the deep and shallow breaths of panic. The high is ending. We then crash down to the harsh reality of “Stereo Boy.” twigs exclaims “You want just what you said / A fast life and an empty head / I tried to catch a ride / Doors open suicide.” Raw and direct, she states “Look at me / I’ll let you drive me off the edge / If I can land in your oils” after the honest and emotional chorus: “I changed the station, but / my pain, it still remained.” The last two tracks of this album are cathartic. A return to the chasm of vulnerability she once wore on her sleeve in her early work.
Where Afterglow brings musical nuance to the afters of the Eusexua rave, the release of a reimagined EUSEXUA replaces the best songs with undercooked pop songs that sound like they were commissioned for target commercials. A highlight of the revisited predecessor is a feature with Eartheater on the renewed “Striptease”. Eartheater is a recognizable influence on Afterglow as both artists’ alien-esque personas bleed through increasingly potent each time they step into the studio. twigs continues to bring established artists into her defined world with a collaboration on “Wild And Alone,” featuring PinkPanthress. Even without a considerable evolution, twigs validates the image she’s been building and stakes her claim of relevance in the musical sphere.
Afterglow is the least ambitious of twigs’ records, marked by a lack of musical risks and somewhat conventional song writing. Tracks such as “Touch a Girl” and “Piece of Mine” are beige in comparison to the hyper innovative sound we’re used to hearing, though they remain highly stylized. At times it feels as if she is trying so hard to confirm her aesthetic that the music takes a back seat. But what it lacks in musical invention, it makes up for in concept. Each song is an alternate ending to the night, and together they make up the emotional, destructive, and hopeful behavior of the afters. From the optimism of “SLUSHY” to the crashing reality of “Stereoboy,” the record follows the spiral of a comedown, starting with the euphoria of dancing with strangers, to the uber ride home where the corners of reality are starting to bleed in under the rising sun.
This record is a winding road of embodiment. twigs leaves us coming out of a time warp where the pain of reality blends with the euphoria of a body high. “When I was on earth, I was spinning” she exhales, culminating these sister albums into a single line: “Hurts so good, I got that afterglow.”