With limitlessly innovative songwriting and production, the cinema of twigs’ music has never been more affecting. MAGDALENE is not just on the vanguard of pop, it’s in a breathtaking class of its own.
MAGDALENE is a revelation. FKA twigs’ first album in four years, and her best work by far, is as introspective as anything she’s written, but more obviously centers her voice as a conduit for plain emotion. Written during a publicly scrutinized relationship with a famously reluctant vampire, as well as a more private recovery from the removal of fibroids from her uterus, she has said she found solace and inspiration in the story of Mary Magdalene, among the New Testament’s most reviled and misunderstood character, whose complexities were rewritten by centuries of chauvinist churchmen into a fallen-woman side note in Jesus’ story. By locating herself in Magdalene’s lineage, twigs, a Catholic school alumnus, explores the ways deeply conservative expectations trammel women; in doing so, she locates a version of herself within these ancient and oppressive archetypes, upending and transcending them through the power of her songwriting and the sheer magnetic pull of her presence.
| A1 | Thousand Eyes |
| A2 | Home With You |
| A3 | Sad Day |
| A4 | Holy Terrain |
| B1 | Mary Magdalene |
| B2 | Fallen Alien |
| B3 | Mirrored Heart |
| B4 | Daybed |
| B5 | Cellophane |
