UK artist FKA twigs followed up 2014’s critically acclaimed album LP1 with a five song EP, M3LL155X (it’s pronounced Melissa—don’t worry, you’re good).
The EP is short—short enough to listen to its entirety on a break from your summer job bagging groceries in your hometown. However, what the album might lack in length, it makes up for in quality songwriting and terrific production.
Those unfamiliar with the creative wheelhouse of FKA twigs will first be struck by the trippy and ambient production that she often performs in front of. On M3LL15X, FKA twigs replaces Arca (Kanye West, Björk) and Clams Casino (A$AP Rocky, Lil B) as her principal collaborators, and features famed Beyonce-workmate BOOTS, who has credits on nearly every of the project’s tracks. This change in production has a serious impact on the sound of the record—instead of the sweet hooks and choruses that were on LP1, twigs and BOOTS push themselves to produce a project full of edgy instrumental backgrounds and more avant-garde song structures.
The EP opens up with a track called “Figure 8” that seems like an easy progression for the artist. Her airy vocals are set up against the flickering percussion track and an ominous bass synthesizer with the artist begging, “Let me live through your vice.” It’s a nice moment, but quickly the EP moves onto more exciting territory.
The middle section of the EP bangs so hard. On “I’m Your Doll,” listeners hear twigs sing emphatically about her unfulfilled desires in a romantic relationship to her lover. It is set against this instrumental that begins meekly, but grows to a hulking juggernaut demanding from the listener the same respect and engagement FKA twigs requests of her partner. On the next track, “In Time,” a booming bass line ripples through the track while the vocals dance nimbly over the rest of the bouncy instrumental.
Then on “Glass & Patron,” the project’s lead single, FKA twigs turns all the way up. She has never sounded as good as she has singing confidently against the track’s loud accompaniment.
I loved this project and am excited to have an pop artist making projects as diverse-sounding musically and as lyrically progressive as FKA twigs. Her confidence and honest writing on sexuality will become one of the main talking points people take up when discussing the record, and I’m glad for it. Her ideas are powerful, especially because they come from the mouth of a black woman who is wholly comfortable inhabiting and controlling her body.
In a summer where men shoot up movie theatres because they allegedly hate feminism, a project like M3LL15X boldly confronts the narratives that fitfully govern how women can express themselves. Full marks.
