Euphoria and Desire on the Dance Floor: FKA twigs' 'Eusexual' Revolution

'EUSEXUA'

FKA twigs

Young Recordings

Electronic

 ★★★

In 2024 alone, nearly a hundred clubs closed in the United Kingdom—the cradle of 'rave' music. Just two days ago, Paragon, one of the trendy clubs in New York, announced its closure. The legendary Watergate in Berlin ended the year by saying goodbye to its audience forever after more than two decades active. In Spain, concert halls are shutting down one after another. However, the more the dance culture disappears, the more it seems to infiltrate mainstream electronic music. If one of the albums of 2024 was ‘brat’ by Charli XCX, a hymn to partying until dawn, one of the first great international albums of 2025 is 'EUSEXUA', the third studio album by the also British FKA twigs.

But, if ‘brat’ was a hymn to introspective and individualistic dance, in ‘EUSEXUA’ we find an ode to the collective hedonism of the 'rave'. To the bodily liberation of dance and the mental liberation of sex as paths to ultimately collective liberation. The album's title, a word invented by twigs herself as a blend of ‘euphoria’ and ‘sexual’, already sets the tone. A path here that is anything but linear, where FKA gracefully takes us from techno to house, from garage to drum and bass to hip-hop to ambient, often all in the same song.

Songs that Dance

Because the songs of ‘EUSEXUA’ do not stay long in the same place, as if they themselves were dancing. In the last 30 seconds of ‘Perfect Stranger, closely thematically linked to 'cruising', the garage gives way to a machine-gun bass drum. A house rhythm interrupts the choral solemnity of 'Keep It, Hold It', one of the gems of the album, almost five minutes of praise for vulnerability and submission as transformative forces. ‘Sticky’ starts as a ballad, extremely sensual and yet melancholic, to end in an ambient baroque worthy of Aphex Twin himself. And so it goes for the forty-something minutes of the album.

What unites this nineties dance kaleidoscope (many have compared it to Madonna's ‘Ray of Light’) is undoubtedly the characteristic voice of twigs, that ethereal, heavenly, and deep timbre at the same time. However, perhaps it is not sufficient as a common thread for the fragmentation of ‘EUSEXUA’, that incessant movement between genres and melodies, to end up causing the opposite effect: when all the songs use the same resource of seeming to be made of so many little different song pieces, one ends the listening of ‘EUSEXUA’ with a certain feeling of repetition and exhaustion. A repetition that restricts the album and that, ultimately, plays against its cathartic and liberating intent. Patri Di Filippo

Other albums of the week

'The bad fire'

Mogwai

Rock Action Records

Post-rock

★★★★

The ‘bad fire’ is hell in certain Glasgow slang, and the Scottish band embraces it while recovering from a cycle of illnesses and losses of close figures. Refinement of their style book, that turbo grammar with soul, ready for slow-burning lyricism in the almost dream-pop '18 volcanoes' and with cathartic power in all-out guitar artifacts like ‘Lion rumpus’. Mogwai in a suffering and victorious mode in their 30th year. Jordi Bianciotto

'Museum of Disappointments'

Joe Crepúsculo

El Volcán Música

Electronic-pop

★★★★

Joe Crepúsculo is, by now, a genre in itself. In his new work, ‘Museum of Disappointments’, the 'baixllobregatí' draws from the most varied dance music as always, but his success lies in updating his sources in each album, with a clearer influence of techno, mákina, and harder sounds in this one. A rhythmic force that fits perfectly with the darkness that looms over the album. Dancing and crying, only the best know how to do it so well. P. D. F.

'The night'

Namina & The Barbarians

Self-published

Song-jazz

★★★★

The singer-guitarist from Moià excels in her alliance with these ‘enlightened barbarians’, the trumpet of Pep Gol (La Vella Dixieland) leading, galloping over a mestizo blues and a film noir swing with Brazilian and Mexican affinities, dialogues with Víctor Català and Joan Fuster, and a sinuous approach to ‘Queen Bee’ by Taj Mahal. Poetic songbook with light, mystery, and denunciation in the expressive, clouded voice of Natàlia Miró do Nascimento. J. B.

'The Way Out of Easy'

Jeff Parker ETA IVtet 

International Anthem

Jazz 

★★★

The guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise) and his quartet have been immersed in a 'groove' they've slowly woven when someone -this is a live recording in a tiny venue in Los Angeles- lets out a timid cheer, "!c’mon!". But they continue in their own way, meticulously drawing a pattern that could almost be an electronic 'loop' but isn’t, because it’s handmade, full of details, breaths, and variations that occur gradually. Dreamy, mixed music -jazz, rock, minimal funk- that is enjoyable, cooked slowly and on the fly, contrary to the accelerated, infinite-scroll world. Roger Roca