FKA twigs drops refreshing third album

amidst capricorn season

By Lily Isakson-Bell, Reporter

FKA twigs is the true princess of avant-pop and she’s back with her third full length album, “Caprisongs”, her first project in over two years. However, if you’re about to dive into “Caprisongs” expecting the weird, engineered, very avant-garde-ness of her previous albums and EPs, you might not get what you’re looking for. While it’s still equally as meticulous as FKA twigs’ previous two albums “Magdalene” and “LP2”, with spotless production and vocals from head to toe, “Caprisongs” is more mainstream and digestible.

Two years ago, I don’t think I could’ve imagined FKA twigs straying from the almost weird, very serene sound that she’s been establishing since 2012. But, having listened, and relistened to “Caprisongs” many times, I think that the album fits FKA twigs’ body of work quite well. It’s still instinctively her. The album is metallic and shining, just like the rest. It remains electronic and very dancey, even more so than previous works, and the attention to detail is perfectly precise. There are more trap and hip hop elements in it than anything else she’s done, making “Caprisongs” still cohesive with the rest of FKA twigs’ body of work, but still distinctive.

“Caprisongs” starts with one of my favorite songs on the album, “ride the dragon.” The song opens with FKA twigs’ saccharine sweet voice saying “Hey, I made you a mixtape.” You hear talking interspersed throughout the rest of the album as well, including conversation between FKA twigs’ and friends, voicemails left to her by the people around her, little messages by features, and so on.

These conversations, intermixed with the messages of love and admissions of self that FKA twigs puts into each track, make the album feel very personal to the listener. The beginning of the third track on the album, “meta angel”, starts with a conversation between FKA twigs and friends about how she wants to be more confident and really own her stuff this year. On “oh my love”, my favorite track on the album, the song starts with a message of disappointing romance and ends with how to be confident in spite of it.

By the time the album wraps up, you can tell that FKA twigs is optimistic. She’s sung you through how painful her year has been, and how she’s gotten through it with the help of her friends. By the time you reach “thank you song”, the 17th and final track, you can tell that, like everybody, she’s trying her best to make 2022 a better year than 2020 and 2021 have been.

FKA twigs took to Instagram the day of “Caprisongs'” release and admitted that she had entertained the idea of not creating music anymore. She later says that “Caprisongs” is her journey back to herself, through both the friends and the artists that she features on the album.

Rating: 9.5/10