Decided to go with the screenshot that wasn’t product placement or RPattz…
[Video][Website]
[6.12]
Micha Cavaseno: Twigs knows about discipline and how to stay still — her dancer background implies this. However, that same sort of terseness and rigidity populates this song and a lot of her discography. Phrases aren’t released, they’re plucked and placed down with a dry sensibility, marked by her falsetto’s constant smashing against the edge of shrillness. The way the song presses into the edges and drags its feet against time is intriguing but makes the irritating elements all the more at the forefront, while what offers the familiar is somewhat cheap.
[4]
Brad Shoup: It’s a big-ass check mark in 2014’s column that a damaged-art consideration of one’s music-video career is a pop artifact. “Damaged” may undersell this, actually: FKA twigs shunts herself from pole to pole, fucking with tempo like a drunkard idly manipulating a turntable. There’s loads of icy mezzo-soprano splotching the track: dissociation on a discount. The best moment is a question: “is she the girls from the video,” the observers wonder, a perfect little sardonic question that could have stood for minutes without an answer.
[5]
Alfred Soto: What videos is she watching? Voice of the Beehive dipped in atmosphero-syrup.
[4]
Anthony Easton: FKA Twigs’ vocals, breathy and tragic, are a radical aesthetic choice that positions her as part of — and against — a tradition of R&B infused hyper-femininity. That those choices match the narrative of the song, and how that chorus might as well come from an alt-world Ronettes, deepens the complications.
[9]
Katherine St Asaph: In theory I can accept that Twigs’ blank, glassy (and Glass-y) aesthetic is on purpose. That still doesn’t make it remarkable, particularly not when paired with the eighth iteration of Emile Haynie’s one song.
[5]
Patrick St. Michel: A whole bunch of scattershot sounds, sometimes coming together to sound quite nice, but oftentimes a bit too all over the place to match her highlights.
[6]
Iain Mew: The second chorus of “Video Girl” is the most startling thing I’ve heard all year. The way it represents the overload of trying to process emotions on the spot by slowing down and warping almost to breaking point is incredible. The rest is not quite as taut or intense, but the pervading sense of betrayal and not knowing what to do still gives it powerful impetus.
[9]
Sonia Yang: While I loved “LP1”, this song didn’t immediately captivate me. However, when you append “Preface” to the beginning and set everything to a video of her dancing wildly yet restrained while a man is being executed, the end result is an unsettling, mesmerizing mix. Barnett’s ethereal vocals sway from sensual to sinister, and her movements hint at something intimate one moment, then drives the viewer away the next. It’s disorienting, yet I can’t look away.
[7]