FKA Twigs – Water Me

Fuckin’ Kick Ass? Formerly Known As? Fungible Kitsch Ambassador?

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[5.88]Katherine St Asaph: Pretty in a brittle sort of way, or brittle in a pretty sort of way. I’ve discovered so many acts like this (Worm Is Green comes to mind) trawling through index directories or used CDs or artist recs; “Water Me” closes itself up like a time capsule for the same. (Why anyone would download, sound unheard, something called “FKA Twigs” escapes me, but perhaps in 10 years she’ll rename herself.)
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Patrick St. Michel: Is it possible to be intimately lonely? FKA Twigs finds solace in herself. “Water Me” is a downtrodden meditation, “he won’t make love to me” being a hell of an opening line, though “I guess I’m stuck with me” stings way more as it drips with a self-hate practically whispered in the listener’s ear. Production-wise, it’s a lovely bit of minimalism, Twigs’ voice wrapping around itself to create a disorienting vocal effect that’s mysterious and sad. Like The xx for unrequited love.
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Anthony Easton: “Ethereal” suggests a very specific kind of floating, something that has space to move, that is not airless. The work here, which has been and will be called ethereal is something else — it doesn’t float, and does not have the weight to properly sink, it mostly just exists in the space that seems worn out and not really present.
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Brad Shoup: The vocal has an improvisational feel, like a through-composed hymn to measuring up. The textures are wonderful, the pace stately, so it’s really bad that I kept fantasizing about air horns.
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Alfred Soto: The looped and stuttered mysteriousness is pleasant as an interlude but this is apparently intended as a song.
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Jonathan Bogart: If there’s a song here, it’s so buried beneath the clever-clever rhythmic futzing, electronic squelching, and blank atmospherics that just thinking about having to do the excavation work to uncover it is exhausting.
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Will Adams: It frustrates with each additional listen. The extended intro is painful lollygagging, the clattering sticks annoy, and the pitchshifted vocals distract from the original. The story she’s telling is heartbreaking, but when it takes this much work to care, there’s a lot wasted.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: As downtempo as it is, “Water Me” does not make concessions for its tricksiness — you have to ease into it, to accept the layers of racket and almost sinister sparseness. Producer Arca has been honing this sinister and alien sound, most notoriously via contributions to Kanye Wests Yeezus — his imprint is all over the lurching “Im In It,” for example. But when Water Me appears to submerge into its structure, that voice is there to meet it halfway: human and tender and real. Twigs has a special talent to make this off-kilter collection of sounds flow like a slow jam, and even more so to make it emotionally resonant.
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