Where are the lines drawn in the delineation between art pop and regular pop? For every FKA Twigs, Caroline Polachek, Aurora, or Japanese Breakfast, there are the cultural and social juggernauts of Gracie Abrams, Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, and Chappell Roan. As someone who has always worn his band t-shirts as a source of pride and inspiration and has danced less than he can count on two hands, I’ve always had a lot of respect for a well-written pop song, be it from the aforementioned ‘art’ pop artists or the latter current crop of pop stars du jour.
And by pop song, I don’t mean some Elvis Costello thing thrown together (although that’s something). Not THAT kind of pop. I mean sugar-coated, bubble gum pop – the kind of shit that painted the top forty in the late ‘90s and ‘00s. Not boy band shit – although much of that has stood the test of time (I hate the Backstreet Boys as much as anybody, but as a cultural zeitgeist that shit is a bulldozer leaving a trail of hookworms behind in its treads). I mean real singer-songwriter pop stuff, most of it written by women – which is neither here nor there – but in a world where men grow up being taught to wear their emotions close to their chest, it’s no wonder the world of metal is filled with guys who have been carrying around a lot of anger issues. At least the girls can sing about being heartbroken without feeling as if they’ve let down their psycho-emotional guards.
But don’t worry. You aren’t going to catch me listening to Milennium or Brittney Spears on my way to the clurb. Oh, if it comes on the radio, you’re damn right I’ll be singing along to it at the top of my lungs, but don’t act like you wouldn’t either. But that’s not how art pop works.
Art pop works like this: I was in the car last week driving my family home from school. I had queued up “Childlike Things” from Twigs’s latest release Eusexua. If you don’t know – and why would you, anyway – this track features North West, who is the daughter of Kim Kardashian (even writing that makes me wonder how far I’ve fallen from my days of playing noise rock and listening to Reign In Blood). It’s sheer, unadulterated bubblegum pop, firmly entrenched in this annoying, K-Pop inspired, over-produced modern day schlock veneer.
My 11-year old son, in the backseat, made the following remark: ‘Why are you listening to this? It sucks. It’s so annoying.’ This is from a kid who has “Chicken Wing Chicken Wing” on his playlist. I asked him to elaborate (everyone’s a critic), and he couldn’t go beyond the fact that it was making him want to jump out the window. Even my wife looked at me and agreed with my son. ‘This does NOT sound like you,’ she added. I took a deep sigh and skipped to the next track.
But isn’t that the beauty of art pop? If this was any other artist, I would clearly say to myself this song sucks, simply because it truly WASN’T for me, literally and figuratively. But coming on an album by an artist whose dance music isn’t always for the faint of heart, that demands close attention and writes songs that seem to move in and out of multiple dimensions, “Childlike Things” almost seems like she’s trolling her listeners into believing that she’s doing all of this with the utmost sincerity. But is she? And isn’t that the point? FKA Twigs‘s music exists to keep all of us guessing about what’s coming next and – more importantly – why she chose to do that very thing.
Which is funny considering her latest album Eusexua might be her most poppy album to date. Twigs has described the music on Eusexua as reaching a state of euphoria so great that one transcends this earthly realm to become something altogether more than just human. In some ways, she’s structured her whole career around this ideal. She’s always existed in this science fiction space, a constant morphing around a central theme of celebratory individualism, all the while still never drifting too far from the central fulcrum of mass-consumption. She’s a star, for sure, but her stardom is one that she’s worked hard to craft in her own way. Like the trail-blazing Björk, who has always been the platform from which to view Twigs‘s artistic trajectory, she’s never been afraid to mix things up, even if those things are still in the same creative bowl.
The lead title track “Eusexua” establishes FKA Twigs‘s fascination with early techno, the kind that rose up in the Eastern bloc shortly after the wall fell, an unforgiving four-to-the-floor pumping heartbeat of sexuality and ecstasy-induced euphoria. The song features the glitches and simple musical hiccups that make a typical FKA Twigs song. Her vocals are firmly entrenched in that modern whisper-singing that can be alternately annoying and compelling at the same time, a way of broadcasting vulnerability in way that’s stripped of pretense. The song is a slow build until around the three minute mark, when the bass drops and the song takes off. These are not emotional waters FKA Twigs traverses: there’s a lot more mysticism and magic built into her craftsmanship than self-pity and petty revenge. She isn’t dropping “Driver’s License” or “That’s So True,” that’s for sure. “Eusexua” is more at place in the world-building of Mad Max than it is in the bedroom of a teenage girl, and this alone puts Twigs atop her own heap of discarded sci-fi tech. This is music for a future in which we’re all shading our eyes from the reflections off of our metallic world, and “Eusexua” is just the start.
Second song “Girl Feels Good” sounds like it could have been lifted from Madonna‘s Ray of Light album from 1999, a dance music classic. Like the title song from Ray of Light, “Girl Feels Good” relies on repeated melodies and a driving beat nestled within an atmospheric wash of transcendentalism. What made Ray of Light such an enduring piece of electronic dance music was simply the sheer confidence Madonna brought to the record. Like the original diva, FKA Twigs finds herself in the position of a peerless beam of sonic light – her success goes way beyond the recording studio. Be it a major role in last year’s remake of The Crow, or modeling for Calvin Klein, Twigs‘s persona is, as they say, larger than life. Perhaps this is all part of her quest for reaching her own level of self-described ‘eusexua.’
“Perfect Strangers” – outside of the ridiculous bubblegum pop of “Childlike Things” – is Twigs‘s most blatant appeal at subduing the masses a la Charli XCX. While FKA Twigs will never usher in the Next Summer of Brats, there may be some ulterior motives at play. The song is short, tight and – in a lot of ways – perfect, but it’s a perfection that’s hard to categorize. The video is all FKA Twigs. The colors, the imagery, the way she moves and projects her body as if it’s part of a greater tableau, makes it easy to understand why she’s risen to the level she’s risen. Sonically, it’s as if she’s trying to show the listener that she’s capable of making the next top ten banger, but that she doesn’t have to and doesn’t want to because, well, because she’s FKA fucking Twigs, thank you very much.
And just so you know she’s more than a people-pleaser, she’ll drop the abrasive, malleable electronic “Drums of Death” on you, a collaboration with Eusexua producer Koreless. The song glitches, pops, sparks and distorts its way through the sonic equivalent of a fiber-optic cable buried miles underneath the sea. Filled with dissonance and heavily effected vocals, it’s what Twigs does best: it’s transformative and a peak through the blinds into the not-too-distant future. “Room of Fools” comes right on the heels of “Drums of Death,” and the two come off as a one-two punch of electronic experimentation that showcases the way FKA Twigs can build her own understanding of what the technology part of ‘techno’ can actually do when in the hands of a visionary artist like herself.
“24hr Dog,” at 4:41, is the longest song on a album filled with bizarre art-pop gems, and the most introspective and eusexual, to coin a new term. The song begins with some dreamy Boards of Canada-like synths that permeate the tune for its full length. “24hr Dog” takes its time, and gives Twigs room to move and slink like the anthropomorphic feline she seems to endlessly project. Lyrically, its Twigs at her most vulnerable and submissive. Coming towards the end of an album that has consistently showed her flexing her creative muscles, a dominant master class in modern experimental electronic music, “24hr Dog” sees Twigs pulling back into the corner of the room and beckoning you to come and join her on the ground.
But no one keeps FKA Twigs in the corner, and none of the rooms in which she operates in are as easily defined as a ninety-degree angle. She’s spent her career as an architect of unique vision, crafting sonic buildings that seem to begin where they end, halls that twist and turn upon themselves, staircases of Escher-like quality. I suppose what I’ve just described is simply a fun-house, and in a lot of ways that’s exactly what the music of FKA Twigs is. You just never know what to expect. I’d like to think that if FKA Twigs could have been in the backseat of my car that day I came back from school with my family – if I could get her to stop dancing for a moment – that she’d get a real kick out of the three of us trying to figure out what the fuck was going on with “Childlike Things.” And in that sense, Eusexua is a fun house we’ll be coming back to time and time again.