FKA twigs - LP1

FKA twigs

LP1

6 August 2014

Young Turks

4.5 stars out of 5

 

Tahliah Barnett records as the artist formerly known as twigs (apparently just plain twigs was taken, so she added the FKA). Her debut album, LP1, follows in the same naming tradition as her EP1 and EP2. At times coming across as a profanity-spewing Kate Bush fronting an experimental electronica band doing warped R&B, Barnett is poised to be the next big thing of the underground (is there really such a thing as an “underground” anymore?), combining “hip” with “weird” in a way that works.

 

 

“Two Weeks” dropped about a month and a half ago, the video racking up just over a million and a half views by the moment I’m writing this. Barnett’s been compared to pop divas such as Ciara and Mariah, but frankly these comparisons are ridiculous, as the tracks on LP1 are going to be passed over by Top 40 radio stations as “too weird,” “too intense,” or, most likely, “too good” or “including too many instances of motherfucker.” Barnett certainly has the voice, but it’s been clear from the start that she isn’t going to play the game—her music can be intensely sexual, but she doesn’t adopt the typical tropes of objectification as those artists named above so often do. Musically, apart from the vague territory of “female vocals on top of beats and bleeps,” she shares nothing in common with them either—this ain’t no summer dance party soundtrack, unless Merce Cunningham comes back from the grave and starts hosting sock hops for the kids.

 

 

Confident, well-written, and well-crafted debut LPs seem to be the norm these days (TEEN, Ought, etc), and LP1 ranks right up there with the best of them. For the post-R&B genre, Barnett has raised the bar, and in a couple of years will likely have a score of followers and imitators. No possible reason could excuse you for ignoring this record.

 

 

reviewed by Richard Krueger