FKA TWIGS – LP1
01. Preface
02. Lights On
03. Two Weeks
04. Hours
05. Pendulum
06. Video Girl
07. Numbers
08. Closer
09. Give Up
10. Kicks
FKA TWIGS’ highly anticipated debut album unfolds just as the way she came onto the scene: gradually, sensually and in a way that was wildly arousing. That eerily breathy vocal we’ve grown to love, the one sends shivers up and down our arms opens the album and breathily presents itself on every track. The manner in which Tahliah Barnett controls her voice and the pristine production allow the record to sparkle, glisten and glow – much like that drive-me-crazy teardrop in Water Me.
There’s an air of ambiguity around the record as much as there’s been around the artist. With every track and every video she’s released, the London-based R&B singer is baring all yet simultaneously giving little away. Paradoxically, LP1 feels both intimate and distant. Like her captivating videos, the record is an intensely choreographed affair – its well thought out but not calculated, controlled but not forced, it lets you run free but not amok. It’s meditative and demanding all at once. It’s doesn’t lend itself to causal listening, and rightly so – its worthy of your time.
The movement within the record is extraordinary. It sways and soars and jerks and twitches, it flows and floats and folds. From the start, FKA TWIGS’ work has been praised for its mature songwriting that is unabashedly sexual, tender and erotic: ‘Motherfucker, get your mouth open, you know you’re mine’, ‘When I trust you we can do it with the lights on’ and ‘I could kiss you for hours’ are just some of the sensual pleasures – and pains – within the record. LP1 is often honest to the point of uncomfortable – but as Barnett makes clear from the start, that’s what life, relationships and being oneself entails. Indeed, the record opens with a direct quote from 16th-century poet Thomas Wyatt’s I Find No Peace; ‘I love another and thus I hate myself.’ The record is at times autobiographical, by way of Barnett’s whispered confessionals we’re let into her world: Video Girl recalls her experiences as the go-to backup dancer in pop videos; a job that had her dancing for almost everyone in the industry but which left her unsatisfied. And thus her musical project, FKA TWIGS, was born.
Shortlisted on BBC’s Sound of 2014, the twenty-something Londoner’s created an aura around herself in a way very few artists manage – with every new release, she’s electrified us and with her debut long player we’re seduced.
FKA TWIGS’ weapon of choice is a delicate, obscure sort of intimacy and she’s used it to become this year’s most intriguing female artist.
NBHAP Rating: 4,5/5
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