FKA twigs
LP1
YOUNG TURKS
8/10
With her (ostensibly calculatedly) cloying moniker, one might easily wonder if “the artist” FKA twigs is already plotting to someday transmogrify into an unpronounceable symbol. For now, though, she seems intent on sprinkling pixie dust upon the banal state of contemporary R&B. Not to lazily slap a tag on her, mind. To wit, opener “Preface” seems to instead be introducing some sort of hyper-sexualized medieval choir. But a modus operandi soon emerges, whereby twigs (real name: Tahliah Barnett) preternaturally alternates between dulcet-voiced seraph and spooky, celestial seducer. Indeed, despite occasionally falling back on some of the more clichéd vocal stylizations of the genre, there remains something eerily gossamer about her. The music itself begs off all reasonable codification, with beats appearing and receding with not the faintest evidence of musical logic, and her vocals at times morphing into instrumental elements that are swallowed up into fractured, equivocal soundscapes. But all this sonic delirium shockingly coalesces into genuinely captivating hooks and stunningly sensual atmospherics. If forced to, one could perhaps draw some plausible philosophical connection to, say, Tricky or CocoRosie; to be sure, LP1 echoes their extraordinary ability to conjure worlds as sybaritic as enigmatic out of utter structural pandemonium. But in this case, really, only one word will truly suffice: BONKERS.
