In which we reconsider attitudes.
[Video][Website]
[7.00]
Ramzi Awn: The rhythms, soundscapes and levels on “Figure 8” are all an easy 10, and FKA Twigs’ vocals are exceptional. For some time, it was a scary thing to listen to FKA Twigs. The music was simply too good. It was a combination of jealousy, disturbance and sheer lack of bandwidth that kept some people me away all this time, but the fact remains that the songstress is the new generation’s answer to Bjork. She has spoken candidly about her career, discussing Kate Bush along the way, and it shows. While some may demand a moratorium on references to artists like Kate Bush and Bjork, their indelible influence is on every part of “Figure 8,” and it is better for it. The melodic intervals on the track borrow from the same British brand, and every instrument sounds like a brush off the same palette, forcing you to reexamine all preconceived notions of what music should sound like. “Figure 8” invites Twigs’ falsetto — one of her most powerful tools — and simply put, blows you away.
[10]
Katherine St Asaph: Enough people I respect tremendously love FKA Twigs enough that I’m beginning to think I was too harsh on LP1. Dumping Paul Epworth and Emile Haynie for Boots is both symbolic and desperately needed; the result is something like Kristy Thirsk singing a Lydia Ainsworth song. But only half of one.
[6]
Alfred Soto: Clinking and clanking like the ghosts of Waits and Angels with Dirty Faces-era Harvey are in the machine, “Figure 8” bears no resemblance to any R&B I know but she’s played it live for a while. Striking, but it hints at secret things that may not be worth the trouble divining.
[5]
Iain Mew: “Hold that pose for me” she says, in the midst of doing just that, messing with tempo and pitch to stretch out a musical moment even more effectively than in “Video Girl”. It’s like she’s stepped off a tightrope but gravity hasn’t caught up with her yet. The rest of the song is both thrilling and business as usual.
[8]
Thomas Inskeep: Oh, now I get it: FKA twigs is making the records that Björk would be, had her music not gotten so dull. Boots, the producer behind many of the highlights of Beyoncé, would seem a perfect assistant with FKA twigs’ own experimental pop vision, and he proves that here: the track stops and starts and gurgles like Aphex Twin making an R&B record. “Figure 8” goes over the edge that B’s “Haunted” stayed perched on the precipice of. This is, real talk, boundary-pushing pop music, deep and powerful.
[8]
Will Adams: A riddle, wrapped in snap-crackle-pops, inside a distortion filter.
[5]