FKA twigs announced her last album, the gorgeous, expansive MAGDALENE, with “cellophane,” a stunning ballad about a relationship on the brink of collapse. “Didn’t I do it for you?” she murmured over and over again, her tears almost palpable as she sang of the turmoils of a heavily scrutinized romance. MAGDALENE as a whole seemed to delineate twigs’ sorrows with a poignant directness, trading her clubby beats in for a more visceral art-pop.
twigs wrote CAPRISONGS, her new mixtape, entirely during quarantine, a time when many artists voiced their woes about feeling distanced from their peers. In a statement, she described the project as her “journey back to [herself] through [her] amazing collaborators and friends,” and its tone is a stark 180 from MAGDALENE from the start: “Hey, I made you a mixtape,” she whispers in the first seconds of opening track “ride the dragon.” “Because when I feel you, I feel me, and when I feel me, it feels good.”
Though it’d be easy to brush off this playful intro as cloying, in comparison to the sense of isolation she imparted on MAGDALENE, this sense of camaraderie she immediately establishes feels essential and healing.
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Even without looking at its stacked list of guest features, CAPRISONGS, out Friday (January 14th), feels more communal, too. Executive produced by twigs herself alongside Spanish beatmaster El Guincho, the mixtape sees twigs waver through a slew of subgenres: She winks at Latin trap (“honda”), hypnotizes with ethereal R&B (“careless”), and puts her own spin on frenetic electro-pop (“pamplemousse”) all within the project’s 17 tracks.
