Skip to main content

FKA Twigs - Magdalene // Album Review



Published online by TN2 magazine 17 December 2019.


It’s been five years since FKA twigs last released a full length album, the highly acclaimed LP1. This debut album had a fantastic sense of atmosphere, with a minimalist, glitchy electronic aesthetic that complemented twigs’ fragile vocal lines wonderfully. Twigs’ voice would break through muffled beats, intimate and tragic. The consistent sparseness of the sound gave it a haunting, lonely power.

In this follow up record, although there is only one track featuring another artist, twigs feels a lot less lonely. You could see Magdalene as coming in the wake of those other heavily produced, highly collaborative and promoted albums like Tyler the Creator’s IGOR and Ariana Grande’s Thank U, Next. Their similarities also lie in their personal context, with each album being in reaction to a breakup. “I never thought heartbreak could be so all-encompassing,” twigs said of the album, “but the process of making this album has allowed me for the first time, and in the most real way, to find compassion when I have been at my most ungraceful, confused and fractured. I stopped judging myself and at that moment found hope in Magdalene.” It as if for these artists, the isolation and fragmentation that are felt following a break-up are embraced and become features of their music.

The liner notes of Magdalene are far from lonely. Nineteen people were involved in writing the songs and thirteen people in their production. Unlike IGOR, the dizzying number of collaborators isn’t reigned in by a clear structure. The final result is that the album lacks tonal consistency. The most egregious offender is the song “holy terrain”. The sudden appearance of a soundcloud beat and a middling rap feature is like a bucket of cold water after the dreamy atmosphere of the previous tracks. Fortunately, the transitions are generally quite smooth on this album. We follow twigs’ vocals as she moves through a shifting musical landscape, from the Kate Bush-esque “sad day” with its ‘80s synths to the otherworldly “fallen alien”, where a crooning chorus reminiscent of Thom Yorke is contrasted with chanted verses so aggressive that they wouldn’t be out of place on an M.I.A. track.

Magdalene’s runtime is another similarity to IGOR and Thank U, Next. At just under forty minutes, the album feels insubstantial. It never explores, only evokes. Although the closing track is fantastic, it left me with a feeling of “is that it?” Might it be that the music itself has been neglected in favour of the wider conceptual project of Magdalene?

It’s great to have a new album from FKA twigs after five years, and it’s exciting to see her collaborating with other artists, but with the end of the year approaching, I’m left wondering if I’ll still be listening to Magdalene in 2020.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory

Published in Cassandra Voices on 9 October 2021. Often overshadowed by his elder, Nobel laureate, brother W.B., Jack Butler Yeats occupies an exalted position among Irish painters. ‘Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory’ is a new exhibition in the National Gallery commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the painter’s birth, and exploring a stylistic evolution that draws on both Irish and British scenes. Jack was born on August 29th, 1871 into a marriage of two Irish Protestant families, the Yeatses and the Pollexfens . Whereas the Dublin Yeatses embodied a faded aristocracy, priding themselves on genealogically questionable claims of descent from the Dukes of Ormonde, the Pollexfens were of a more recent vintage, having come to Ireland in the eighteenth century, finding prosperity through their shipping interests. Each of the surviving children of moderately successful portrait painter John Butler Yeats and Susan Pollexfen made significant marks in their respective ...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Beginner’s Guide to Electronic Music Production with Arvo Party

Published in print by TN2 September 2020. Published online 26 October 2020. Over the Summer, I got around to doing something I’ve been putting off for years – producing electronic music. From the outside, this hobby can appear intimidatingly difficult, with its own jargon, software and online subcultures. Once I started digging into it, however, I was surprised to find there are a plethora of free, beginner-friendly resources available. The most difficult part was learning where to start. For help, I reached out to Irish electronic musician Herb Magee (AKA Arvo Party), for advice on getting into electronic music as a beginner. To produce electronic music, you need a Digital Audio Workstation (commonly referred to as a DAW). This software allows you to create, record and manipulate audio. There are many reputable free options, such as Garageband (which comes pre-installed on Macs), Reaper (recommended in a Q&A with Autechre) and Cakewalk. Arvo Party “started out with Logic and stil...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You // Book Review

Published online by Cassandra Voices, 24 September 2021. For Christmas two years ago, my mother bought me a copy of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People(2018). I tried to read it, I really did, but gave up after twenty pages. Looking back now, I can’t remember exactly what it was that turned me off it. I recall saying something along the lines of not liking the dialogue and the way the characters were realised. Looking back, I think I disliked the social pressure exerted on me to read and admire Sally Rooney. You see, as a student in Trinity College Dublin, the figure of Sally Rooney loomed large.  Access to campus was restricted while a TV adaptation of her book was filmed. Her novels lined the windows of nearby book shops. Rave reviews appeared everywhere you looked online. She was the voice of the Irish millennial. All of this, rather than encouraging me to embrace her work, raised my hackles and ensured that I would find fault in anything I read by her. After laying Normal Peopl...
Post a Comment
Read more