Bleep

The musical auteurism of FKA twigs has stuck with us ever since her breakthrough debut album LP1 dropped in 2014. Yet, with every new release, it still feels like a totally new artist has emerged to dazzle us from under the spotlight. CAPRISONGS is perhaps her most dramatic shift yet, and a necessary one. After the heartbroken pain and yearning of MAGDALENE, twigs serves a revitalising mixtape containing her most extroverted, collaborative, and just plain fun material to date.

Across CAPRISONGS, twigs weaves candid conversations with her friends amongst her soprano vocal tapestries and star-studded troupe of producers, swaddling the listener in the warm arms of togetherness after years mired in isolation. In a series of sonic vignettes, she jumps from baroque-styled trap beats to murkily kinetic dancehall to happy-go-lucky hardcore, even throwing in a heartfelt interpolation of Olive’s classic ‘You’re Not Alone’ on ‘darjeeling’, almost as if flipping at high speed through archives of UK dance radio from the past twenty years.

The tape goes in on ‘ride the dragon’, starting a flowing river of holy vocal molasses that evolves into the swerving tyres of a drag race. Strings of heavy kicks bounce throughout ‘meta angel’, where twigs’ penchant for marrying esoteric subjects with pop songwriting shines as she introduces the mixtape’s astrological themes. The “pretty and sad” anthem ‘lightbeamers’ sways like ballet dancers with piano en point and buoyant harp flourishes, mirrored in the muted piano chords of the cathartic ‘thank you song’, breaking the heart wide open with her jubilantly elastic voice.

CAPRISONGS is a testament to FKA twigs’ mutability as an artist, placing her adventurous nature at the forefront of her most uplifting work yet.