FKA Twigs Transitions Into a Brighter Sound on ‘Caprisongs’

Adi Mehta

Among the most innovative artists and performers that have made an impact in recent years is UK sensation Tahliah Debrett Barnett, better known to the world as FKA Twigs. Twigs introduced an avant package of trip-hop, electronic and R&B of a distinctly UK sensibility. The voice, the thrust, the aesthetic, put her in a realm all her own, and her sounds have darted unpredictably to thrilling new ends since. After Twigs’ incisively emotive 2019 album, “Magdalene,” a record fueled clearly by deep-seated dramatic despair, she became vocal about the abuse of past lovers, and the abundance of racially-directed antagonism she had experienced. This overdue formulation of righteous disapproval came along with a pronounced praise of liberty from relationships, particularly as an expression of justice for women. Now, her new mixtape, “Caprisongs,” a reference to FKA Twigs’ sun sign, Capricorn, takes an unexpected shift to center, with an entirely different style, one still steeped in a distinctly London sound, but with dancehall and Afrobeat textures. Speculations of a dramatic stylistic reinvention began to propagate after Twig’s collaboration with the Weeknd for “Tears In the Club,” which belied its title, demonstrating a marked departure from the dark aesthetics that characterized both the Weeknd’s early work and Twig’s career until that point, and perhaps more markedly lyrics that revealed an unprecedented resolution from an artist whose previous subject matter had derived much of its weight from the shadows of amorous rejections.

Along with Twigs, Spanish artist El Guincho is the leading architect of this new sound, executively co-producing the mixtape and featuring on all but two tracks, with a motley crew of producers joining on different tunes. His heavily tropicália and Afrobeat-inspired stylings scatter the tortured swagger of older Twigs with a new sway and bouyancy. It’s a rather radical reframing, instantly setting a new mood and pace for the mixtape. Throughout the mixtape, Twigs and El Guincho spar with London’s Koreless, who is featured on nine of the seventeen tracks, and electronic productions are spacious and elegant, with darker tones and splatters of glitches. The trio of Twigs, El Guincho and Koreless make for a push and pull between the physical and the visceral.

“Ride the Dragon” begins the mixtape with a dialogue of exaggerated gender stereotypes. A pitched down male voice opens the track, and Twigs is already playing the part, in her whispery, ultra-feminine voice. The chorus begs, “Really want to kiss me, do it before the end of this song.” It’s a subtle wink at the absurdity of natural tendencies, and an insistence of the right to simply follow them if one wishes. But then Twigs asks, “I’m a boss in my life, do I really have to boss in the sheets?” The next track, “Honda,” takes on an Afrobeat energy, but with dark overtones, in the way we’ve come to expect from Twigs. The mere combination of both aesthetics is a factor at the heart of this album. The song features Twigs essentially rapping, trading lines with Gambian-British rapper Pa Salieu over a backing track that works choral gestures into a streamlined percussive beat, and a chorus effectively using the titular “Honda” to mean “We don’t need fancy things. We’re in this together.” “Meta Angel” begins with a dialogue, with Twigs expressing the insecurity that has often inspired her work, in a particularly direct, confessional way. The song marks a relative return to familiar texture and content, as it moves into bass eruptions and carefully paced blasts and expressions that restore the fanfare inspired by Twigs’ earlier work.

“Tears In the Club” essentially plays out its name, directly purposed to duty, and left with an abandon that speaks to a bold freedom. The song features the Weekend at his most elegantly understated, in some respects a return to form, that makes for an overdue combination of aesthetics, even if an adulterated mix. There’s a subtle warp to the curves, and an ambient delicacy that sharpen and expand the song’s feelgood fare, and it comes from none other than Argentinian avant electronic visionary Arca. There’s a natural segue, with “Oh My Love” running into trap affectations, and lyrics that pick on the same specificity, At this point, the upbeat, lighthearted feel of the music is clearly a conscious, premeditated shift in direction, rather than a mere dabbling in new sounds. It’s only on the finale, “Thank You Song,” that Arca appears in full grandeur. With El Guincho finally having stepped out and taken his beats with him, the gossamer intricacy of Arca’s stylings is able to lift the music above the base of the album’s cryptic dancefloor domain, to new ethereal heights. “Caprisongs Interlude,” considering the centrality to the album title, and the considerably less ostensibly experimental focus, is provocatively vague, framing the entire album with a new mysterious ambiguity.

On “Lightbeamers,” some of the boldly whimsical quirk that Twigs has fleshed out teases its way into a meander through terrain somewhere between the muffle of Soundcloud rap and the hyperpop-informed excess of Charli XCX. “Papi Bones,” featuring Shygirl, who gels particularly well with the Carribean, syncopated stylings that recur on the new record, is perhaps the most buoyant, effervescent example of FKA’s new direction. Sega Bodega, the Irish producer with whom Shygirl launched, joins this track, although the broad range of electronic styles that make up his sound here allow for only subtle identity markers. “On “Which Way,” featuring Dystopia, the lyrics take a rather dark turn, with a portion recounting, “When I was walkin’ through the London city lights / I met the dеvil and he smiled at me and said, ‘You’rе going the wrong way.’” And, on “Darjeeling,” Jorja Smith complements the same natural melismatic, free-flowing idiosyncrasies that Twigs made her name with, putting a brighter spin on the sound, and offering an elegantly rounded counterpart. More strikingly, “Careless” stands out not only because of Twigs’ own contribution, namely a refrain of, “You can be careless with me,” but because of Daniel Caesar, who offers a more somber, restrained verse. 

In the end, this new project from Twigs will initially surprise long-term fans, as the dark textures and eccentricities endure only in vestigial distillations and momentary flourishes, occasional brooding undertones amid an overall, incontrovertibly breezy affair, at least relative to Twigs’ full oeuvre. Yet, the new lightness, and array of features are presented with a coherence that effectively demonstrates this new direction, in a way that runs like a consistent, effervescent party. The rollout of this release as a “mixtape,” rather than an “album,” seems perhaps intended to frame the project as more of an escapist, casual affair than a defining artistic progression. It’s a fresh spin on FKA Twigs’ core aesthetic, reinvented with a cohesion that is admirable for its clarity of vision and the boldness of its unabashed reinvention.

“Caprisongs” releases Jan. 14 on Apple Music.