FKA twigs

It’s being allowed discussion by mods on the subreddits of popheads, indieheads and hiphopheads which is a honestly a big tell of how hard it is to pin down. I don’t remember when was the last time that all 3 subreddits allowed discussion on one album.

lol at an album disrupting the reddit ecosystem

it's not like there hasn't been r&b in her musical dna before but i agree she's more in the kate bush/bjork etc. art pop lineage, and this album feels like the balance has shifted even more towards the latter. the closest r&b reference point i can think of is janet's most outre moments like "empty" as brad said and that's something i'm very into

yeah I wouldn't classify this album as R&B; it's more akin to Bat for Lashes to me.

I have seen Twigs perform 3 times and I think she is one of the greatest live acts of the 2010s. I always try to catch her shows when I can. That said, I rarely listen to her records in their entirety even though I think she is a fantastic musician. Talent like hers doesn't need a specific genre, much like Bjork and Kate Bush.

Love this so far

Not to be too narcissistic but 'mary magdalene' made me go put on this track that I put out four years ago, in which I was more or less imagining I was making a Twigs song.

Fallen Alien is sick, def a nice change of pace

I like hearing her try a little different vocal approach

Wish this was as exciting as the first LP :(

oh my god, the cover

beautiful record. can't wait to continue listening to it over the weekend.

Am a fan of Twigs but am hugely turned off by the trend of distorted face covers ie St. Vincent, Juana Molina. Not a productive comment, I know.

I have seen Twigs perform 3 times and I think she is one of the greatest live acts of the 2010s. I always try to catch her shows when I can.

Do you like Pink?

xpost

i like the distorted face covers. i can see how they're offputting to some, but i like that they're pushing back against expectations of how a female pop star should present themselves. we often tend to see the male equivalent as adventurous or artistic or mischievous (the peter gabriel facemelt, richard d james smile + a million other things he's done), whereas the female version as just grotesque. plus it also pushes against the trend from the past few several years of covers featuring close-ups of the artist looking up and 3/4 to the side, as if they had just seen the face of god (and often with the celestial light shining across their perfect features). it's cool to take that as a starting point and then work against it, i think.

I really do not like this styling of singing. Nails on a chalkboard.

The cover(s) are great! Also fit in with the bjork references earlier.

heard the whole thing. unsurprisingly i think it's not so great (for example 'home with you' and 'cellophane' are kinda radiohead and not in a way i enjoy). surprisingly i really like 'fallen alien' though.

heard the whole thing. surprisingly i think it's not so great too! sorta uninspired tori amos retread. I expected holy terrain to be my least favorite track but it might be the best thing on the album!

maybe i need to relisten a few more times. fallen alien isn't terrible either. First three tracks just sound bad!

This album bangs and I really like the different shades she brings out in her voice across the various songs

That first pair of EPs was something else. It's been mostly downhill ever since.

The Radiohead-ishness of it all is obviously fine in my book and I mostly enjoy the album while it's on but none of its songs stick.

I’ve tried to appreciate the first two EPs multiple times but I cannot get into them at all

yeah i'm the same, that 2014 post of mine up thread still stands - it wasn't until "two weeks" that things clicked for me.

new album is great, "sad day", "cellophane" and "mirrored heart" in particular

i certainly hear the Tori Amos comparison but it's hardly a retread - even at its weirdest From the Choirgirl Hotel is still a keys-playing-singer-songwriter-with-a-band record while this is much more electronic obviously. it's very much a modern take on that sort of gloomy late 90s sound

don't really hear Radiohead beyond "cellophane" being vaguely similar to the sort of piano ballad with cool sound design they've done occasionally

it's more the "performative vulnerability" aspect than the instrumentation, for me

three spins, i'm tapping out. loved the EPs, this is not my jam.

"home with you" may be my favorite thing she's done to date

also she is a fucking stunning singer as evidenced by the version of "home with you" in the link ufo posted

I don't know what the people who dislike this are hearing but I can only assume they are listening to some other album because this album is great.

It's only getting better for me. Wasn't totally sure about Cellophane as a first single, but it's an amazing closer.

it's not 100 percent my thing but i like it much better than lp1, many stunning moments

everyone is correct about "fallen alien"

And I wouldn't want a whole record that sounds like Holy Terrain, but it works in the album

I don't know what the people who dislike this are hearing but I can only assume they are listening to some other album because this album is great.

This. I need a few more spins but this is AOTY material imo

what i'm hearing is uninspired production, trite lyrics, painfully sing-song delivery and heavily manufactured attempts at emotional resonance that feel disjointed and clumsy. what i'm not hearing is the pensive, mysterious R&B from the first two EPs or m3ll155x.
I mean, all credit to you that you're enjoying this, but it's not impossible to imagine it not resonating with any number of listeners.
last album that i had this severe a break with popular opinion may have been arca, which this sounds a bit like i suppose.

i don't love this to the degree some do but there's a lot to like about it and i don't hear any sort of drastic falloff from her previous work at all - "cellophane" and "sad day" are career highs

I’m having trouble digesting the album as a whole, but tbh I’m still stuck over how precious Cellophane is.

fyi, the entire artwork on the album cover is a strong, strong argument for buying physical media

"painfully sing-song delivery" uh, ok.

TIL forks/ulysses doesn't like singing

lol, okay man.

Well, what does "sing-song delivery" mean?

Because, in the context of describing someone's singing/chanting in a song, it reads as "singing". She's not talking on the phone on this album.

like she's reading a nursery rhyme over a metronome. or, more accurately, freestyle vamping along to the sophomore classical guitar dude's noodling in the quad.

It's a weird af pop record, not surprised it's not everyone's cup of tea. But the specific critiques of "uninspired production" and "heavily manufactured attempts at emotional resonance" are quite silly imo. Production is pretty incredible, and the lyrics sound as genuine as I've ever heard from her. Yes it's the opposite of how she's presented herself in the past, but not any less effective. Seeing her in person perform these songs certainly emphasizes this, especially when she sequences shit like Two Weeks and Cellophane back to back to close a show.

On the mastering front, this album has more dynamic range than any pop record released this year that I've heard, and just sounds utterly gorgeous on a great system. Production is immaculate.

I am going to need you to point me to an example of what you are referencing, forks, because right now I am concerned that you're having a stroke and it's impairing your faculties

don't know what to tell you! I've now gone through it four times and the production bores the hell out of me. "Thousand Eyes" lyrics wouldn't be particularly revealing in a high school yearbook.

it's okay that you love it and want to defend it but "silly" isn't any sort of insight.

If you'd like an example, thousand eyes is a good start? sad day has some of that tick-tock super-mannered lilt too.
or jeez, it's not singsongy but lord is 'daybed' leaden.
anyways, i'm clearly swimming upstream with you guys. I really wanted to like it! I'd like to hear what you're hearing! Can't help that I'm hearing what I'm hearing! It's not good tho.

if it makes you feel any better, i don't care much for kate bush either.