FKA Twigs: EUSEXUA Afterglow
FKA twigs’ latest venture, EUSEXUA Afterglow, arrives with the energy of an artist gleefully throwing the rulebook out of the tour bus window. Having spent much of her career baring her soul in meticulous slow-burn ballads, she now seems oddly entertained by the spectacle of her own fame – almost treating it like a slightly absurd game show she never agreed to appear on. It’s a spirit captured in “Wild and Alone”, where she muses on the strangeness of celebrity over airy, weightless production that feels nicked from some otherworldly club night.
Twigs has, admittedly, not had the calmest run-up to release. A visa mishap pushed back her North American tour earlier this year, followed by a blisteringly honest message to fans about the “parasocial nightmare” of online expectations. Then her off-the-cuff musing – “Where are the thinkers?” – accidentally set the internet ablaze for a week. The cumulative effect? A perfectly chaotic backdrop for what became an equally chaotic album drop: not only did we receive Afterglow, but also an updated, reshuffled version of EUSEXUA, both sharing a title but not a tracklist, and both bearing covers that look like parallel-universe versions of the same dream.
Described loosely as the comedown after EUSEXUA’s neon-lit highs, Afterglow oscillates between dancefloor wreckage and half-conscious reflection. Opening track “Love Crimes” pits her soft, almost whispered delivery against a relentless four-to-the-floor thump. “HARD” and “Predictable Girl”, bolstered by Mechatok’s glitchy fingerprints, fuse R&B warmth with a kind of wobbly, hallucinatory sparkle.
Other moments drift rather than punch. The Two Shell collaboration “Cheap Hotel” is the standout among the woozier cuts – ghostly, warped, and hypnotic. Meanwhile, “Slushy” and “Touch A Girl” evaporate almost as soon as they arrive, like overhearing the end of someone else’s story. “Lost All My Friends” narrates the universal 3am panic of being stranded in a club, but curiously renders it as a floaty, new-age daydream rather than the sweaty nightmare it usually is.
The updated version of EUSEXUA takes a darker, more contemplative turn. Gone are two of its former centrepieces, replaced with tracks like “Perfectly”, a fragile reflection on perfectionism wrapped in metallic techno, and “The Dare”, which harks back to late-’90s British slow jams. Not all swaps pay off – the ethereal “Lonely But Exciting Road” is an unexpectedly muted finale compared to the explosive “Wanderlust” it replaces.
Across all the new additions, the brightest moment is “Sushi”: a beaming, unfiltered celebration of pleasure and queer ballroom influence. It’s a giddy roll call of dates, snacks, and nights out, delivered with the youthful abandon that made the original EUSEXUA feel so alive. The image of twigs cycling through the city, pastry in hand, en route to belt “Gasolina” at karaoke, might be one of the most delightfully vivid snapshots she’s ever committed to tape.
Ultimately, the twin releases of EUSEXUA and EUSEXUA Afterglow feel like watching an artist in full improvisational mode, reshaping her own work in real time and refusing to fossilise any version as the definitive one. Not every experiment lands, but throughout both records are gleaming flashes of humour, freedom, and unselfconscious joy. It’s clear that twigs is having more fun than ever – and she’s inviting everyone along for the ride, even if the map keeps changing.
