Sometimes the best way to process trauma isn’t introspection and rage, but to go to the club and dance things out. That’s the joy-filled through-line of Eusexua, FKA Twig’s third studio album. It’s a piece of radical optimism that can hopefully get us all through some dark times ahead.
Twigs, aka Tahliah Debrett Barnett, has had a particularly horrible few years. In 2020, she sued her ex Shia LaBeouf for sexual assault, battery and infliction of emotional distress. The case still hasn’t come to trial, and her lawyers have accused LaBeouf of being “egregiously evasive”. No one would begrudge the artist an album dissecting her torment.
![[FKA twigs on her new album and overcoming four traumatic years: 'I’ve had to learn to live in my body again']](https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/09/25/15/59/JHE_SOTHEBYS_-(2).jpeg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
Instead, Eusexua is a tribute to the healing powers of hedonism. While filming in Prague, Twigs got properly into the techno scene. “Experiencing techno music there and developing a deeper relationship with dance music,” she told the Standard, “it was on the dance floor that I felt Eusexua.”.
![[FKA Twigs to unveil performance art piece in London as she announces new album]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2024/09/13/16/13161552-59fa06d3-b5cd-4f23-ab35-f59955937519.jpg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
She refused suggestions to give the album a pre-existing name – certainly not something (shudder) SEO-optimised. Eusexua is her own invention to describe “that moment of nothingness just before a big surge of inspiration or creativity or passion. I describe it as a moment before an orgasm”.
![[FKA Twigs and Shia LaBeouf to begin gruelling trial: but what happened between the exes?]](https://static.standard.co.uk/2020/12/11/21/urnpublicidap.org4c21b4ee99c64322a1942528ef2098d4.jpg?crop=8:5,smart&quality=75&auto=webp&width=960)
The album opens on the title track, Eusexua, with the sound of a heartbeat rushing blood into your ears, while Twig’s inimitable floating soprano assures us “you’re not alone”. Then the club beat comes in. There is some anger here, but it’s transformed into art and perseverance.
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