FKA twigs describes her new mixtape, CAPRISONGS, as falling in love all over again but this time with music and with herself. Despite this, twigs’s third album is cut through with something undoubtedly dark and unnerving. Even on its most carefree and dance-able songs, something is disorienting about the music… as though twigs is struggling to stand up straight after a few too many drinks.
Dance track ‘papi bones’ has an unnerving repetitiveness, tinging the laid back Jamaican beat with a dizzying sheen. Throughout the record, Twigs bounces around uncountable genres and influences but never seems to settle in one place.
Twigs’s affinity for edgy theatrics is as strong as ever, her songs routinely swoop from earnest sincerity to dance floor chaos, and back into a choral or string arrangement. The track ‘meta angel’ begins with a sample of friends making resolutions and promises to each other, before leaning into a dark and auto-tuned soundscape, where angelic singing mixes with ominous drum beats and heavy bass. Meanwhile, ‘minds of men’ recalls twigs’ previous album MAGDALENE, which was inspired by her breakup with Twilight star Robert Pattinson and the agony of getting fibroids removed from her uterus. The album leant heavily into religious imagery and dark drama and was informed by her fascination with Biblical character Mary Magdalene. Her stately and delicate singing style carries through here, although on the new record, it is delivered with a lightness that MAGDALENE had no space for. While the previous album was densely sad, CAPRISONGS is more upbeat and more fun, but no less dramatic for it.
The album plays with intimacy, with Twigs testing the limits of her vulnerability. The bulk of the record is sung in a much lower register than MAGDALENE’s fragile soprano, Twigs’s voice feels stronger and more assertive. Despite this, she frequently plays with the idea of leaving herself to another’s mercy. In ‘careless,’ she sings “you could be careless with me”. Whilst ‘oh my love’ sees the object of her desire downplay her affections – instead of embarrassment, twigs is assertive and unashamed as she spells out exactly what she wants. FKA twigs is starting to shake off her previous vulnerability, making way for a new kind of selfishness, putting herself first as a kind of self-preserving mechanism.
Musically, twigs takes hints from the 90s, favouring a high-shine and sensual feel, similar to Erica de Casier. This suits her singing style, which catapults from flirty and breathless to commanding and assertive. The range and style of the songs here are a lot more playful than twigs’s previous brand of grandiose melancholy, and seems a lot more grounded. The mixtape is interspersed with samples of conversations with her friends taken from lockdown Facetimes. This element of camaraderie and friendships is mirrored in CAPRISONGS’s extensive collaborations. The featured artists blend seamlessly into the space provided for them, demonstrating twigs’ chameleon-like ability to meld herself into different musical shapes and sounds.
‘darjeeling’ marks one of the most obvious and successful collaborations on the mixtape. Part love song to London, part tale of loneliness, twigs’s glottal-stopped, poetic verse sounds starkly different to Jorja Smith’s rich singing or Unknown T’s rap, which bounces off the incessant drum beat. This contrast transforms the track into an epic set over a glitchy harp sample.
CAPRISONGS might be less serious than her previous offerings, but what it lacks in a heavy heart, it makes up for with its reckless abandon. Twigs plunges herself into genre after genre in a whirlwind of noise and emotion. Despite the comforting presence of her friends, CAPRISONGS feels like FKA twigs is swept up in a restless and dizzying movement between places, people, and feelings.
Words by Martha Storey
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