It’s a slippery concept, but FKA twigs’s third album title roughly translates as an instance of feeling perfectly at one inside oneself, the Cartesian mind-body split healed over. An example might be diving unselfconsciously into a rave in Prague, as twigs did while filming The Crow in 2022. Alternatively, it might be the moment before orgasm. “It feels nice,” she choruses simply on Room of Fools, a track that explores the somatic healing potential of the dancefloor with an exuberance that tilts both at Kate Bush and Middle Eastern vocalisations. Girl Feels Good drives home the point that the world spins better when women feel good, recalling, of all people, Madonna.
FKA twigs has long operated at the bleeding edge of left-field digital musicianship, with incursions into the mainstream reminding fans she could do pop, if she wanted to. Eusexua is one of those instances writ large, where gnarly electronics – in collaboration with producer Koreless – remind you of her outsider status while the tunes sing out. A hymn to anonymous encounters, Perfect Stranger is club pop powered by a little two-step syncopation, while a more minimal, emotional track such as Keep It, Hold It contains explicit advice for how to get through hard things.
