FKA twigs’ music has always been about putting the beholder of it into a certain feeling. From the ultraviolet-smeared sex of her debut, LP1, to the shattered glass heart of 2019’s Magdalene, Tahliah Debrett Barnett’s music can be a purely evocative sculpture of post-modern art-pop, though maybe more so ornate that it felt best indulged in through observation rather than participating within its walls. EUSEXUA, her third studio effort, invites you into its interiors, however, bringing together the best of both worlds — a merger of the ultimate in euphoric and sexual — to create her most palpable musical statement and one intended for explicit body movement in ever way.

If twigs’ previous efforts suggested that she was the heir apparent of björk in all of their evolutionary futuristic sonic gestations, then we learn here that the mother of inspiration is also that of Madonna during her pop-electronica eras of Ray of Light and Music. This is to say that the music here is more outwardly indulgent in a prismatic array of pleasure, immersing you in a late night fever dream that sees, hears, and touches its theme through constant aural stimulation, aided by a myriad of production from future-minded electronic shapers both large and more microscopic in detail from Koreless, Eartheater, Ojivolta, 100gecs’ Dylan Brady, Two Shell, and Nicolas Jaar.

It’s the pop music at its most fashion-forward and gluttonous that stands out the most in the strobing rave pulses of standout “Girl Feels Good” and “Perfect Stranger” (“Childlike Fun” is exactly what it sounds like as well, but gets points deducted for enlisting 11-year-old nepo child North West for a weird guest spot where she raps in Japanese about Jesus for some reason.) The origin and deconstruction of these energies being built up and broken down by the electron particle size on “Eusexua” and “Drums of Death” are the listen’s most avant-garde explorations, yet they don’t detach themselves from any of the building and balancing cardio benefits that come from its first half.

With the mid-point glitched out comedown of “Sticky”, EUSEXUA eventually leads to its low battery closing act of “Striptease”, “24hr Dog” and “Wanderlust”. Despite their shifts in energy, they’re still immaculate glass designs of avant-pop to see through as the haze of the night begins to lift. On its ellipses, twigs leaves you feeling both satiated by the last 43 minutes while wondering when the next hit of it starts all over again.

Highlights: “Eusexua”, “Girl Feels Good”, “Drums of Death”

FKA twigs’ EUSEXUA is available now on Young Records.

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