FKA twigs has been crying in the club. She’s been crying out of sadness, sure, but also out of happiness and elation. She’s been crying for unexpected reasons: the sheer power of bodies moving in space as one, the vulnerability of submission, and carnal fulfillment. All of these sensations have overwhelmed her to form the basis of EUSEXUA, her enthralling third album.
“Eusexua,” as twigs defines it, is a feeling of “momentary transcendence,” when a sense of joy is so enveloping that you leave your human body for an instant and become a being of light. twigs experienced it herself while living in Prague several years ago as she filmed the 2024 remake of The Crow; she’d go out to Czech raves in the city’s underground and industrial districts, finding creative inspiration from the throbbing techno, the amoeba of bodies, and the anonymity.
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There, she was not a pop star and rising actress — she was a stranger, free to embarrass herself and dance like an idiot, a blank slate from which to build herself back. After all, twigs has been through a lot, and these relentless club nights offered a chance to rid herself of shame through sex and dance and the kaleidoscope of human expression. EUSEXUA is indebted to these discoveries, positioning her open-hearted musings against pulsating beats and exuberant sonics.
She achieved a similar feat on her heartbreak-fueled Magdalene, which expanded twigs’ sonic ambitions past her tightly-coiled debut, LP1. On EUSEXUA, she once again bares her soul with her unique vocabulary, focusing just as much on texture and atmosphere as she does on the album’s overarching lyrical themes. Her collaborative detour on Caprisongs, twigs’ 2022 “mixtape,” certainly influenced some of the new album’s more extroverted styles — “Childlike Things” in particular could have slotted right in on Caprisongs — but EUSEXUA’s cohesive, absorbing mix stands on its own.
While twigs attributes EUSEXUA’s thumping tenor to the Prague raves and the pre-production curation from electronic duo Two Shell, there’s a lot more to the album than four-on-the-floor beats and futuristic synth work. Like another great pop album before it, EUSEXUA takes inspiration from ’90s rave culture and the experimental pop sounds that twigs grew up on.
