Double Review: 'Eusexua' by FKA Twigs and 'Fancy That' by PinkPantheress

Two albums by two UK female pop stars: Eusexua is an exciting return to Twigs’ experimental side, whereas Fancy That is a fun-but-fleeting barrage of retro club bangers.

It sounds like a perfume brand. Eusexua. Apparently, it’s a made-up word that FKA Twigs defines as: ‘a sense of oneness, whether experienced through music, intimate connection or pure creative flow’. Throughout her decade-and-a-bit music career, Gloucester-born art pop singer FKA Twigs has always used sex as a metaphor for exploring deeper subjects, and that’s kinda what we get throughout Eusexua with songs like ‘Girl Feels Good’ and ‘Striptease’. This is not your average sexy pop album. This is cerebral sexy pop. Meanwhile, the production feels like it’s from another planet. It’s cerebral sexy pop for aliens.

That’s the vibe I want and expect from an FKA Twigs album. Her last album Caprisongs wasn’t cerebral or alien enough for my liking. With its afrobeats and autotune, it felt like it was trying to be more of a mainstream club album. It felt too normal and it felt too human. Eusexua is the sound of Twigs returning to her homeworld. The production is surreal and glitchy. ‘Drums of Death’ sounds like music to accompany a Martian haka war dance, while ‘Room of Fools’ features pitch-shifted stuttering synths that sound like a spaceship landing. There are also a lot of enjoyably bizarre vocal moments like the haunting wails on title track ‘Eusexua’ and stuttering part where she sounds like a malfunctioning robot on ‘Striptease’.

It's a pop sound that feels so far removed from everyone else. The only other artist I can compare her to is Bjork. However, unlike recent Bjork albums, Twigs can still inject a catchiness into her albums that doesn’t make them too challenging. A prime example in the track list is ‘Childlike Things’, which rivals the hookiness of a PinkPantheress song. Of course, Twigs didn’t want it to be too conventional, so we get Kanye’s daughter randomly singing in Japanese half-way though the track. You wouldn’t hear that on a PinkPantheress album.

Speaking of which, let’s move onto Fancy That. Also hailing from the south-west of England, PinkPantheress makes a very different style of pop to Twigs, consisting of ultra-catchy simplistic bops that scarcely ever break the three minute mark. Her airy British-accented soprano voice and self-produced UK-garage-inspired beats give her a very distinctive sound that make her one of the few deserving artists to blow up on TikTok. I loved her debut album Heaven Knows, and I thought this mixtape stood a chance of being the record of the summer given how strong the singles were. But then I listened to it…

It's a very fun record. But just as I was getting into it, it ended. It’s only 20 minutes long, consisting of 9 tracks, one of which is a pointless intermission. I knew that she liked to keep things short and sweet, but isn’t this a little bit meagre? My other issue with this album is that it gets a bit too carried away with the Y2K nostalgia. PinkPantheress’s sound has always clearly been influenced by turn-of-the-millennium pop and I don’t mind when an artist wears their influences on their sleeve, however it feels like half of the melodies and samples and lyrics on this mixtape are references to previous songs.

It's shortness and overly heavy use of interpolation prevent it from being the great album I hoped it would be. That said, there are still many moments on Fancy That that are an absolute blast such as the earwormy ‘ooh-ooh-ooh’ refrain on ‘Illegal’, the energetic house music production of ‘Tonight’ and pretty much the whole of transatlantic Estelle-inspired love jam ‘Stateside’.  It also feels like PinkPantheress is tiptoeing into edgier lyrical content here. Admittedly, it’s a bit jarring to hear her sing ‘you want sex with me?’ and ‘ooh, is this illegal?’ and I wouldn’t like her to go full Brat mode like Charli XCX. But it is interesting to hear her breaking out of her innocent shy girl persona.

Eusexua by FKA Twigs: ★★★★☆

Fancy That by PinkPantheress: ★★★☆☆