Album review: FKA Twigs goes deeper, darker on horny LP Eusexua
British artist FKA Twigs has transmogrified into a Hollywood A-lister since her 2014 debut, and her third album Eusexua takes her into horny, avant-garde territory, with career-best results.
Album reviews for week of February 1 2025:
ELECTRONIC/POP
Eusexua
FKA Twigs
Young Recordings/Atlantic
It’s been almost 12 years since FKA Twigs arrived on the scene – seemingly fully formed from the jump thanks to her dazzling debut single and one-take video Water Me. The kind of artistic ambition and creative vision on display in this early stage arguably hadn’t been seen since one Lady Gaga emerged some five years prior to that. A cult fandom seemed inevitable for the Cheltenham native born Tahliah Debrett Barnett, achieved across her first two EPs and 2014 debut album, but the next step felt unforeseen: this breathy, horny, avant-garde artist transmogrified into a Hollywood A-lister. Her personal life has long since become an equal spectacle to that of her music, and her stature as one of the more unlikely public figures in pop culture has only grown, to borrow a phrase from Alice In Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser. It’s with this framework we arrive at Twigs’s third studio album, Eusexua – so named after a portmanteau coined by the artist herself, combining “euphoria” and “sexual”. Musically, Twigs has never shied away from darker corners of electronic music, often borrowing from the tropes of trip-hop and taking from late-night club culture. Within the proverbial walls of Eusexua, however, the multi-hyphenate finds herself going deeper and darker, with career-best results.
Its opening suite is exemplary of this: the title-track kicks off proceedings with its heartbeat kick-drum and steady, scenic build through beds of synthesisers, while Girl Feels Good embraces indulgent pop and the arresting hook of Perfect Stranger provides a stunning contrast against the harsh, clattering electronic drum loops. Inspired by her experiences at raves in Prague, Twigs shows that she is unafraid to get her hands dirty – be that in her suggestive lyrical content or the musical environment within which it’s found. Of course, it’s not all thumping beats and strobe lights. Twigs also finds moments of glassy stillness within the album, such as the zither-driven Keep It, Hold It and the warbling balladry of Wanderlust, which offer much-needed contrast and a more consistent emotive curvature. Though the album is far from user-friendly or mainstream, and its musical focus may take some getting used to, Eusexua both warrants and rewards deeper listening. It’s become almost a cliche to praise albums for this alone in the streaming era, wherein singles tend to dominate fans’ focus — but it’s a credit to FKA Twigs’ ongoing, evolving artistry more than anything. The long-player remains an event, so long as ones of this calibre are being issued.
David James Young
FOLK
Patterns In Repeat
Laura Marling
Chrysalis
How lucky are we to be living in the time of Laura Marling? At the age of just 34, the British songwriter has now delivered eight sublime albums, starting with 2008’s influential Alas I Cannot Swim. Her close and cool voice can growl (Master Hunter) or gather you softly in its arms (Goodbye England, Covered In Snow). Patterns In Repeat was created in the warm and hazy wake of the birth of her daughter. The initial sketches of these songs were laid down in Marling’s home studio, her daughter happily sitting in a bouncer nearby, or rolling and cooing on her tummy on the floor. This intimacy is the golden thread that runs through the record, as Marling unravels her joyful journey of motherhood, and ponders what is next to come. There are innumerable special moments, but perhaps the most touching is Looking Back, originally written by Marling’s father, which confronts arriving at the end of your life with only memories for company. Poignant and raw, Marling has a way of placing you right in the room with her, a magnetic presence that gently pulls you into her world.
Jules LeFevre
ROCK/POP
Roman XS
Hayley Mary
Independent
Three years in the making, the debut solo album from The Jezabels’ frontwoman Hayley Mary is as you’d expect: considered, concise, everything in the right place with nothing superfluous, a jangling and synth-drenched ode to her ‘80s diva influences that throbs, in equal part, with soaring melancholy and triumphant joy. Produced in the main by Mary and Jezabels producer Lachlan Mitchell, along with contributions from Goodchild and Johnny Took (DMA’s), Roman XS manages to step back in time while remaining astutely relevant – think Kate Bush or Belinda Carlisle (vocals swirling deep to falsetto within the same line, a la lead single The Lonely One) over heavily synthesised keys and percussion, but with a more modern driving, almost urgent, feel to it all. Primordial Afterglow injects a feel-good pop hit, while closer Eris is the balm that soothes, whimsical and free, though no less tough. With the strength of Mary’s voice, along with a songwriting nous many would envy, she creates here a set of songs that could fit snugly within the big-haired 1980s scene, or now, the vastly slicker 2020s. Three years well spent.
Samuel J. Fell
CLASSICAL
Film Fantasia
Emily Sun
ABC Classic
Emily Sun’s debut concerto album is a winner. Adored for her appearances with all the Australian orchestras, here she presents three relatively unfamiliar pieces. A brave move, with touches of Hollywood tinsel in all three, the swashbuckling film score of Korngold’s concerto and the heart-wrenching evocations of John Williams’s theme from Schindler’s List. Somewhere in the middle sits another new score by Elena Kats-Chernin, her commissioned violin concerto Fantasie im Wintergarten, with its surreal touches of German silent movies and Weimar darkness. A very attractive piece, it is underscored with Poulenc harmonies and Prokofiev spikiness, and Sun tosses it off with abandon. The personalities of composer and performer gel beautifully, both a bit naughty and cheeky, but always endearing. The three orchestras – Adelaide, Melbourne and Tasmania – are evenly balanced, and Natalie Shea’s liner notes are Illuminating. At just 61 minutes, the music duration seems light on. There is also a three-movement suite for violin and orchestra from the Schindler score. Hardly a showstopper, this would have added a welcome 10 minutes; and if only they’d cut the audience applause at the end of two works, which breaks the spell somewhat.
Vincent Plush
JAZZ
Bleed
The Necks
Fish of Milk
Australian trio The Necks has, over 38 years, developed an extraordinary cult following in many countries around the world, where its concerts are invariably sold out. For those unfamiliar with its music, its live performances essentially combine two once-unfashionable idioms: minimalism and free improvisation. Its studio albums are somewhat different, constructed with much more complexity. Bleed has keyboardist Chris Abrahams on acoustic piano, a Waldorf Quantum, a Waldorf Q+, an Udo Super Six, and a Hammond C3 organ. That’s a mouthful, but it helps to explain the diverse sounds that are overdubbed, and juxtaposed throughout alongside Abrahams’s signature piano notes and phrases. Those notes are sparse and mesmerising, and often have additional resonance courtesy of electronic treatment. Lloyd Swanton plays acoustic bass and some mandolin, while Tony Buck plays drums, percussion, guitar and kalimba. This album has a somewhat eerie mood, which is perhaps closer than usual to the stillness that characterises the trio’s live performances. Bleed reminded me somewhat of the haunting music The Necks created for the great 1998 Australian film The Boys.
Eric Myers
Album reviews for week of January 24 2025:
ROCK/EXPERIMENTAL
The Bad Fire
Mogwai
Rock Action
Mogwai is celebrating 30 years as a band this year. The Glasgow quartet also starred in a 2024 documentary, and guitarist Stuart Braithwaite released a memoir in 2022. And the year before that, a grassroots fan campaign propelled As the Love Continues to the top of the British album chart – an extraordinary achievement for a largely instrumental rock band that’s always been more cathartic than commercial. So this 11th album arrives with Mogwai seeming more and more like elder statesmen, with a global reputation for voluminous live shows that can turn from serene to savaging (or back again) in a single moment. Named after a Scottish colloquialism for hell, The Bad Fire boasts gorgeous work from American producer John Congleton (St Vincent, Angel Olsen), who decamped to Scotland to helm the record. Congleton’s clean and bright approach doesn’t wash away the band’s darker or noisier impulses, but instead provides a sharp spotlight on the continued chemistry between Braithwaite, bassist Dominic Aitchison, drummer Martin Bulloch and keyboardist Barry Burns. Where early Mogwai albums plunged in passages of crushing noise, more recent outings have been more accessible and exploratory. That’s certainly true of opener God Gets You Back, which begins with an entrancing flow of keyboard and subtly adds more layers until later introducing heavily treated vocals and drums. The track evolves from New Age ambience to groggy synth-pop to gnashing alt-rock, all while making the inevitable journey to a satisfying crescendo and blissful release.
But while the latter is a longstanding signature for Mogwai, these songs are by no means predictable. What Kind of Mix is This? features slow-burn guitar soloing that wouldn’t be out of place on a Pink Floyd record, and Hammer Room opens with jaunty piano flourishes before moving into intergalactic electro-pop vibes that evoke both Stereolab and Ratatat. And if Braithwaite’s alternately rattling and reeling guitar work has long since been echoed by avid students like Explosions in the Sky, it’s still evolving in exciting ways. For a band so strongly associated with wordless, score-like swathes of music, Mogwai continues to use sporadic vocals as further shading. Singing is swathed in vocoder on Fanzine Made of Flesh, which locks immediately into a melody-driven opening before surprising with more straightforward riffing than usual. It sounds like an 1980s-era New Wave band discovering its distortion pedals and relishing all the syrupy layers swirling forth. Meanwhile, Pale Vegan Hip Pain remains glacial and pristine throughout, centring vaporous synth notes and poignant guitar lines against a meditative amble. Only on 18 Volcanoes is there singing that’s unobscured for long enough to actually make out the words. That provides a melancholy yet pretty outlier, though still with a steady rumble underneath. Other tracks locate more muscle at certain intervals, delivered as usual with an elegant sense of downshifting from chaos to control. Contrast has always been a guiding theme for Mogwai, and here the quartet’s far-reaching sense of dynamics remains as satisfying as ever.
Doug Wallen
ROCK/METAL
I Want Blood
Jerry Cantrell
Double J Music
These solo records can go one of two ways: rock star from legacy act tones down for their more sentimental side (and everyone pretends to like it), or said act ‘plays the hits’, figuratively speaking, using the same tricks that gave them a career in the first place. Alice in Chains mastermind Jerry Cantrell has thankfully opted for the latter throughout his solo output, and the same can be said for this. This offers essentially what AIC fans wanted after the celebrated comeback of Black Gives Way to Blue (2009). Vilified, Let It Lie and Held Your Tongue all bristle with the metallic venom fans love, Afterglow marches to a gloomy stomp, and album highlight Echoes of Laughter scratches the ‘90s grunge-ballad itch. Only on the title track does Cantrell sound like a caricature of a rock ’n’ roller, with its propulsive energy veering off into Nascar montage territory. Truth be told, William DuVall, Mike Inez and Sean Kinney are still sorely missed – but if this record contains the DNA of a future AIC release, things are trending in an exciting direction. Rather than showing another side of himself, Cantrell has returned to the well – and it works.
Alasdair Belling
JAZZ
Grief Hope Love
Jenna Cave Sextet
ABC Jazz
This is a unique and highly moving album from a stellar sextet directed by Sydney composer Jenna Cave. The subject matter derives from Cave’s marriage breaking down and her husband taking his own life in April 2022, leaving her alone with her four-year-old daughter Chloe. One of the ways in which Cave dealt with her grief and trauma, on a journey of healing and rebuilding her life, was to write six songs that comprehensively document her sad experience. These compositions are sung superbly here by the great Australian singer Kristin Berardi. Yutaro Okuda (guitar), Tom Avgenicos (trumpet/flugelhorn) and Loretta Palmeiro (saxophones, clarinet) provide thoughtful improvisations either in the body of the songs, or as stand-alone solos. They are atop a faultless rhythm section in Hannah James (double bass) and Chloe Kim (drums). Two short improvisations from the musicians provide contrast. This is a gentle album that demands a close reading of the lyrics, which are available on Bandcamp, and should assist listeners to appreciate this inspiring music which deeply touches the heart.
Eric Myers
ROOTS/ROCK
The Way We Do Business
The Black Sorrows
ABC Music
It’s only fitting that in their 40th year, the Black Sorrows should release an album of songs tailor-made for the stage. While the Melbourne band’s 20th studio outing is not a live album as such, The Way We Do Business is, as its title suggests, a virtual jukebox of outstanding performances. It’s also partly a celebration of leader Joe Camilleri’s previous outfit, Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons, itself historically one of the country’s best live acts. TWWDB features four Falcons alumni, including Camilleri on lead vocals, fellow saxophonist Wilbur Wilde, and guitarists Tony Faehse and Jeff Burstin. But the current Black Sorrows line-up takes line honours: the legendary James Black on guitar/keys, Tony Floyd (drums), Mark Gray (bass), John McAll (keys), with Claude Carranza and Shannon Bourne doubling on guitars. A three-piece horn section strikes the match, with tenor sax maestro Paul Williamson setting fire to Crazy Look and One Door Slams. The latter track features gonzo guest bassist Mitch Cairns, who also stops by for the album’s showstopper, reggae-tinged Latin rocker Burn Out Slow. Camilleri is in fine voice throughout, his customary Van Morrison, Mick Jagger and Willy DeVille stylings augmented by a flawless Tom Petty impersonation on Shelley.
Phil Stafford
WORLD MUSIC
Ova
Afro Celt Sound System
Six Degrees Records
As the swan song release of their visionary wing commander, Simon Emmerson, Afro Celts’ eighth studio album has added poignancy. A fitting tribute to the legacy of late producer/lead guitarist, who launched his groundbreaking band 30 years ago, Ova opens appositely with the set’s longest track, the atmospheric 10-minute-long Hawk Owl’s Lament, which reflects the founder’s love of avian wildlife. The following 10 works in a 60 minutes-plus recording encapsulate other elements that have endeared Emmerson’s multinational, multi-instrumental and multi-vocal ensemble to festival audiences worldwide, including Australia. The soaring singing and stinging kora harp playing of West African N’Faly Kouyate and pulsating percussion work of fellow founder member and co-current bandleader Johnny Kalsi on Indian dhol drum remain core components, while the seductive Gaelic singing of Iarla O Lionaird makes a welcome return to the fold. Pumping global pulses and judicious electronica still vie with traditional instrumentation and polyphonic chants. With the long familiar African/Celtic duality prevailing alongside some exciting additions, the band promises to continue stoking the flame lit by Simon Emmerson.
Tony Hillier
