FKA twigs- LP1

Listening to this album is like diving into a black pool of water, the kind where mermaids sing and try to drag you to the bottom. It’s an intensely personal album about a relationship. Well actually, it’s about Twigs’ obsession with possessing and being possessed. The album goes back and forth, trying to find some sort of balance between the two, in the end without success. And this theme is not explicit in the lyrics. The word “possess” doesn’t show up. Rather the theme becomes the background of the album. The effect is almost voyeuristic, except you don’t really want to see what you’re seeing, it’s just too beautiful to look away.

This is also a sexual and sexy album. Again, the lyrics aren’t explicit, but the beats and Twigs’ voice make you want to loosen your tie and unbutton your top button. This is sexual energy at it’s most potent, it’s most primordial, beyond male or female. It is dark and it is scary.

I was actually scared to listen to this album for a second time. My fear was hard to articulate, but it had something to do with the fear of possession, of having my identity erased, of having this mermaid drag me to the depths. But I had to listen again because the sound was so captivating. This album is a large dark shape that sways seductively back and forth, and beckons you to toward it, and you can’t really help but heed it’s call.

Those two elements: Twigs’ voice and the beats are the backbone of this album. Twigs has one of the best voices I’ve heard in a long time. It’s not exactly versatile, but the way she goes up and down the scales with such ease is astonishing. And as for the beats, they tap into something deep and primitive to create a nice counterpoint to Twigs’ choral voice. I was awed several times by this album.

5/5 with some caveats. You have to listen to this entire album, every single track, if not all at once, in chunks. You could listen to the hit off this album, “Two Weeks,” but that doesn’t do justice to the breadth of talent on display here.