FKA twigs ‘EUSEXUA’ review: ecstatic healing on the dancefloor

Eusexua, to FKA twigs, is “when everything moves out the way, everything in your mind is completely blank and your mind is elevated”. Or more simply: it’s “the pinnacle of human experience”. On the first song and title track of her hugely-anticipated third studio album, she tells listeners over a thudding techno beat that if they’re asked what this new word means, “say you feel it, but don’t call it love”.

The genesis of this idea came to twigs when she was acting in the new adaptation of The Crow in Prague, and would sneak off late at night to the city’s lauded nightclubs, becoming inspired by its renowned techno scene. One night, deep in the throes of this new love, she scribbled the word that titles her new album on the back of her hand in a grotty club toilet.

While this all seems pretty heavy going as a concept to pin an album around – par for the course for one of the most enigmatic and deep-thinking pop stars of the last decade – twigs says EUSEXUA is “deep but not sad”. Maybe surprisingly, she’s right.

Though the album is thoroughly considered and somewhat chin-strokey in its concept, listening to it doesn’t have to be. Opening track ‘Eusexua’ is glistening and triumphant, with the four-four kick drum that glides in half way through defining the first half of the album.

Teaming up with core collaborator Koreless, twigs’ sound expands on EUSEXUA, with the techno-pop of its opening half – the sweaty, propulsive ‘Room of Fools’, the suitably-titled and razor-sharp ‘Drums of Death’ – taken to weirder and more unusual places on its Side B. Her voice reaches for new textures and tones on the slippery ‘Striptease’, while ‘24hr Dog’ is a mesmerising slow-jam.

‘Girl Feels Good’, an ode to female pleasure, teams a gloopy techno synth line with snappy trip-hop drums and a melody eerily reminiscent of Madonna’s ‘Ray of Light’. It’s followed by ‘Perfect Stranger’ – twigs’ most simple and best executed pop song to date – which sees her escape into an anonymous lover while begging them not to reveal “your star sign or the school you failed”. It’s playful, catchy and pulls the ‘eusexua’ concept away from the overly serious billing it’s received in advance of the album’s release.

The search for this higher state of being is brought into stark focus though when considering twigs’ journey since the release of second album MAGDALENE in 2019. EUSEXUA arrives after twigs’ high-profile alleged abuse by ex-boyfriend Shia LaBoeuf, while the singer also had surgery on fibroid tumours in her uterus. A Calvin Klein advert of her’s was banned by the ASA (eventually being reversed), with twigs responding: “I do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labelled me. I see a beautiful strong woman of colour whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.” As she told Imogen Heap in a conversation about the album for Spotify, she “was hanging on by an eyelash” before the concept of the new album came to her.

Even if ‘Childlike Dreams’, a sprightly J-pop song with Japanese lyrics rapped by Kim and Kanye’s daughter North West, is a bizarre misstep on the album, it’s refreshing and warming to see twigs having fun on EUSEXUA. Despite the lofty concept and traditionally cold and emotionally distant associations of techno, these 11 songs are her warmest, most accessible and most feeling-packed to date.

‘Wanderlust’, the album’s closing track, is another departure for the singer. She begins the track sing-speaking with Auto-Tune in a strikingly similar tone to Charli XCX, before again affirming her belief in the album’s core principle and offering it out to the world. “You’ve one life to live, do it freely,” she sings. “It’s your choice to break or believe in it / I’ll be in my head if you need me.” As an example of music’s ability to offer power and strength, it’s a superbly powerful statement on the power of joining her on the dancefloor and finding a higher plane.