Tahliah Debrett Barnett, known professionally as FKA Twigs, released her new album, “EUSEXUA Afterglow,” Nov. 14. “Afterglow” leaves the club floor that Twigs’ previous album “EUSEXUA,” celebrated and acts as a heavy, synth-laden love letter to the techno scene in Prague and the freedom that it encourages. This album perfectly continues the feeling of a fluid, high-energy night. But this time, it carries you out of the nightclub doors and into the cold air of the street on the way to the afters. The night is not nearly over yet.
“Afterglow” was meant to be a deluxe version of the original “EUSEXUA,” but instead took on a life of its own, running away into a drug-fuelled night filled with grimy DJs and hallucinations from one too many bumps. The first track on the album, “Love Crimes,” crushes with a heart-thumping bass that could make an industrial speaker shake. The lyrics sink into the beat, making sure to prioritize the body’s response to Twigs’ music over the brain’s analysis of the words that seem to come from her chest instead of her mouth in primal, euphoric staccato. This is the true essence of “EUSEXUA.”
In an interview with Imogen Heap, Twigs says she wants more “ephemeral, soft edges” in her music. This, combined with her penchant for “raw sexuality,” is the emotion of “EUSEXUA”: “that feeling of freedom, an inebriating (and sexual) euphoria.” “Stereo Boy,” the final track on the album, pulls this off perfectly. The peaks and troughs of the synthesised, tinny, hi-hats embody the blur of dawn as you realize that you have been out so long that the sun is rising on the horizon. We experience the feeling of heat off of a stranger’s body on our own as we flirt and kiss with Twigs’ “Stereo Boy.” The closing track is distinctly softer than the opener, though it juggles metallic synth with layered vocals just as masterfully, a closing track fit for collapsing in bed on a comedown.
Her lyrics on “Afterglow” serve as a departure from her earlier works like her 2019 studio album “Magdelene.” I was 17 when I first heard the album two years after its release and immediately felt as though I had risen to a different plane, a feeling that Twigs manages to retain while experimenting with a different kind of lyricism. “Wet thighs, I’m ecstatic, chemistry was automatic,” from “HARD,” the fourth song on the newest album, has a blatant sexual element that older songs such as “sad day” cover up with yearning and sadness. However, she doesn’t fully move away from her roots. In “Two Weeks,” a song that I loved enough to get a tattoo of the summer I moved to the U.S., Twigs sings outright “I can fuck you better than her” as her synth pad maintains a high pitch that lifts the listener into the realm of unadulterated sexuality and envy.
The synths are pitched lower on “Afterglow,” Twigs’ has matured as an artist and brought that to the studio. She branched out into a collaboration with rising U.K. pop artist PinkPantheress to create a bouncy song that feels in line with a Charli XCX track, if a little more ethereal. This album sits as more digestible than “EUSEXUA” for listeners unused to Twigs’ scene and firmly positions her in the U.K. synth pop scene. While it may not appear in a typical, mainstream, pop music venue, her discography is ready to take its place in the playlists of techno clubs across Europe. I listened to this album as soon as it dropped and I thoroughly enjoyed it, maybe even more than the album from which it derives. I’m excited to see where FKA Twigs goes next in her musical journey, that she now juggles with an acting career. Her film with Nicolas Cage, “The Carpenter’s Son,” dropped on the same day as “EUSEXUA Afterglow.”
