FKA twigs

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.

The point of "thousand eyes" is the setting/arrangement of the lyrics, not the raw lyrics themselves, which is self-evident in the simplicity of the lyrics and the overlapping, increasing density of the vocal instrumental arrangement.

"sad day" is just... how singing a song works? Does it read as "mannered" to you because you can hear her accent or something?

"daybed" is the closest she gets on this album to the more static bits of the first two EPs and I pretty much gloss over it every time it plays.

If you don't care for Kate Bush, then yeah - we'll just have to agree to disagree here. I would go much deeper into specifics on the production side of things (as that's where I have more knowledge from a technical and creative standpoint), but given that statement regarding Kate, not sure it's worth it lol. Sometimes ya gotta just move on. Kinda how I feel about Big Thief tbh.

1000 eyes: i understand how round singing works; the "density" never really hits any kind of crescendo except for a big MILLENNIAL BUZZ (cf arca), fairydust piano noodling and backtracked vocals, none of which move me at all.

sad day: i would call "would you make-a make-a make-a make-a wish on my love aaahahahahah" to be mannered. strangely and perhaps not surprisingly given the past decade of my posting on this board, i listen to any number of songs in which you can "hear accents" and they don't read as mannered.

octo: i don't think the production is clumsy or underconsidered, it's just not working for me! fwiw, i don't like Big Thief either!

lol sad days came up on a playlist now and my 1st thought was ugh this singing is so mannered, who is this and why does she do that

anyways yeah, i'm good to move on and chalk this one up as my bad in general? Y'all may remember my schtick is that I try to find the good in whatever I listen to, hence my surprise this album that I was very excited to listen to by an artist whose work i love and who i like live a lot had no resonance for me.

I'm still trying to imagine Thom Yorke singing 'Cellophane' and I just can't. Chris Martin, however...

It's still the one song here that doesn't work for me, it's actually too conventional for her. One of the most interesting things about Twigs is the way she positions herself as a voice in space (and, live, as a body in space) with dozens of other elements in orbit around her. It's why sound design is so important to all her records.

But there's something about the way she uses her voice on this that really makes it - turning herself into a choral ensemble on 'Thousand Eyes', the way 'Home With You' moves from anxious Tricky Eilish rasp to full-on Kick Inside swoop. And that's saying nothing about the moment where it suddenly blooms into a flurry of woodwinds.

It's one reason why Future makes sense as a collaborator - in that the timbre of his voice works so well when it's just used as part of the wider texture - but also why his own verse seems so prosaic in comparison to everything else.

"Cellophane" is the other song I am pretty much unconvinced by

I think I like it precisely because it’s quite different and “naked” to mostly everything else she has recorded, it’s very revelatory of her actual talent as a singer. I didn’t doubt she could sing before but I wasn’t too sure I’d love hearing her do a piano ballad. It’s not much but she also sprinkles some subtle, atmospheric touches and some well placed glitch effects in there.

no slappers on this record but it's still p good

I was kind of half-hearted about attending her Boston show next week but with this album + her newer greater live voice I'm suddenly very excited.

She's never particularly registered to me before this -- the only thing I ever went back to was the Melissa EP -- but I really like this album. Lush and melodic, super Kate Bush-y in places. "Fallen Alien" is great both on its own and also as a sort of one-song reduction of the entire Hounds of Love album.

Digging aspects of Magdalene - the shameless Red Shoes-ness of it all! She's such a cheesy weirdo and I love her for it. (This is not a diss because I adore the pre-chorus vocal harmonies on "Mary Magdalene" a lot but *that triumphant chorus* belongs in a 1990s Disney film; can't you picture, idk, Pocahontas screaming it on a mountain top?)

The Boston show was insane in every possible way, haha. Five mins. before scheduled start time the exit doors opened, the fire alarm went off, everyone in the building was evacuated and a battle ensued between the very aggressive venue staff (v. much hilariousy in screamy character for Boston) and all the indignant gays in town. She must have been so freaked out, but she was fantastic. She was really gracious despite her post-concert tiredness and signed my hoodie. :3 https://i.imgur.com/6lw3Bit.png

That's great, awesome photo! :)

People on twitter saying that she cancelled last night's concert in Zurich at the last minute because ticket sales were low and she didn't want to play in front of a small audience.

Can't wash that hoodie now!

Magdelene has only sounded better & better since it came out, it's hard to tell these days but it feels kinda slept on.

Or maybe not, all the tracks have 5 - 10 million plays on spotify, so I guess she's doing just fine even if I didn't see much discussion on ILX/twitter/irl.

what... what is happening
http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=chtCbEjhJcE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chtCbEjhJcE

welcome to 2020 where twigs is cosplay camming and dueting with a mosquito from the bronx

xpost with Worst Music of 2020?

100% behind 645AR being famous. you saw Yoga:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0PCMNels-s

Well, that's put me off both music and sex for the foreseeable future.

I haven't laughed this hard in ages but this also means I'll unironically love it soon enough