It’s almost cruelly fitting that depression is likened to being in a black hole and so, too, is it the place we all come out of, when you think of what the vagina really is. For FKA Twigs, the condition of her “nether region” (riddled with fibroid growths) was a major part of her lengthy absence from music after 2014’s LP1. That, and a very public relationship followed by a very public breakup with Robert Pattinson, whose decidedly white supremacist fanbase (being attached to Twilight and all) didn’t have very many kind words for her or their alliance.
With the pressures of the spotlight constantly gnawing at the line between real and fake in terms of their emotions and how they were “performed,” FKA Twigs fittingly commences the record with “thousand eyes,” setting the tone for a relationship teetering on the brink of its demise, with Twigs foreboding that if she walks out the door, it will be the last time she does. What’s worse, she seems almost egregiously concerned not only with the emotional fallout of this, but with the judging looks of those who watch their dissolution unfold. Thus, she tremorously sings, “If you don’t pull me back, it wakes a thousand eyes.” The quiet ominousness of the song is a mirror of being stuck in that kind of fishbowl, having always to tread lightly lest one awakens too many sleeping eyes. Delivered with operatic drama to the backing beat of Jaar’s production, it establishes a tone that is rife with eerie and unapologetic reflection. One that coalesces seamlessly with “home with you,” the video of which Twigs herself directed. Finding sanctuary from the aforementioned prying eyes in the nature provided by “home” (or, the suburbs), she addresses those fibroid growths with the line, “Breathe in, breathe out, pain.” Of course, when paired with the emotional upheaval she was going through at the time, the pain becomes twofold. More profoundly feelable. “How come the more you have, the more that people want from you?” she asks in half-whispered incredulity. Adding of her resilience, “I’ve never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi.” It seems a loose dig at Pattinson’s most financially successful box office venture, with Twigs commenting of the lyric on Radio 1, “In this age, where we’re obsessed with all these superheroes and all these huge franchises making these amazing big films, especially from a female point of view, I’m yet to see, like, a female character who is beautifully strong and perfect, and flawed, and is a full range.” So it is that Twigs tries to embody that which does not yet exist on a mainstream screen format.
Speaking to that vulnerability, she has no problem admitting that she’s burned her lover in the past, yet still wants him to forgive her (it’s all very “February 2017” by Charli XCX). Though there are multiple producers on the track including Cashmere Cat, it is Skrillex, of all people, whose continuously signature synthetic beats stand out the most as Twigs sings, “You’re running/And I tried to make it work before/You’re running/I made you sad before I, then I/Have you ever made a wish before?/I see you running/I made you sad before.” So no, she doesn’t place all the blame on Pattinson for what happened.
In fact, she gives Gwyneth Paltrow a run for her money in terms of usurping the term “conscious uncoupling” (and “respectful, loving space,” to boot) with “unmeshing.” For FKA stated of the fraught period she spent with Pattinson, “When you’re with somebody, your lives become very entwined with like your friends and family and your routine. And then the unmeshing is like, you have to really find out—I had to really find out who I was.” Hence, perhaps it was a good thing that Pattison didn’t take her back despite some initial hesitations on her part to end things.
Skrillex shows up again on “holy terrain” featuring Future, with additional production from the omnipresent Jack Antonoff (as well as Blanco, Jaar, Koreless, Cashmere Cat and Goldstein). One of the brighter spots on the record, the song finds a newly confident FKA Twigs finally aware of her worth and knowing that when a man comes along who sees it as clearly as she does, she’ll intuit it. Getting him to check off all the right answers to questions like, “Do you still think I’m beautiful, when my tears fall like rain?/My love is so bountiful for a man who is true to me.” The track, obviously rife with a sexual double entendre meaning, is also allusive to Mary Magdalene herself (who shows up numerous times on the album, including her first name check on “home with you”). That this is the figure Twigs has chosen to align herself with on a record designed for catharsis is all too telling. For MM was one of the first emotionally complex females ever rendered to the pages of literature as “written” (a.k.a. dictated) by men. Her blend of being the “fallen woman” mixed with being the “woman who saves” is part and parcel of centuries of men’s Madonna/whore issues when it comes to how to classify women. Here, FKA Twigs is reasserting that she can be both, and so much more in between.
Furthermore, there is nothing new about women coping with the pain of losing someone they loved through music. Madonna was the modern pioneer of this with Like A Prayer (Sean Penn acting as a large inspiration for its subject matter). And Lorde and Ariana Grande have both recently had breakup album opuses, with Melodrama and Thank U, Next respectively. But there is something more unique about FKA’s. Something less “why don’t you love me still?” meets “I really didn’t mean to break your heart” and more, this is about me, my pain, my expurgation. The man that inflicted this is a small fragment of why I’m feeling the way I do. To that end, Twigs had the revelation that has come too late for many women of her generation already. That is: “As a woman, I was taught that your Prince Charming would choose you, and when he did, you were grateful. And it was more about you being chosen than asking ‘what’s right for me?,’ and ‘what do I need to be nurtured or to feel complete?’ Magdalene is unraveling that and finding my voice without society’s whispers.”
On that note, the druid-like title track has more than a touch of Kate Bush to it (think: “This Woman’s Work”), with Twigs opening it in top a capella form. In which she asserts, “A woman’s work/A woman’s prerogative/A woman’s time to embrace/She must put herself first/A woman’s touch/A sacred geometry I know where you start, where you end/How to please, how to curse.” A haunting commentary on how the germinal phase of modern patriarchy began, Twigs’ inspiration, the eponymous Mary Magdalene, stemmed from the church’s rewriting of her history as a prostitute, something later debunked by the Pope himself (Paul VI) but which continues to endure in the collective mind’s eye. Because, as Twigs puts it, “It’s easier to call her a whore, because as soon as you call a woman a whore, it devalues her. I see her as Jesus Christ’s equal. She’s a male projection and, I think, the beginning of the patriarchy taking control of the narrative of women. Any woman that’s done anything can be subject to that; I’ve been subject to that. It felt like an apt time to be talking about it.” Apt indeed. And part of the reason for a song title like “fallen alien.”
Of course riffing off the “fallen angel” concept, Twigs talks of the sentiment of being made to feel like a freak by her own lover–the one person who is supposed to accept her with any and all of her flaws. Accordingly, she declares, “I’m a fallen alien/I never thought that you would be the one to tie me down/But you did/In this age of Satan/I’m searching for a light to take me home and guide me out.” While the lyrical content remains baleful, the tone of the track is defiant, especially in contrast to what follows, “mirrored heart.” A philosophical rumination on the nature of love–more to the point, who one loves–Twigs is all awash with the revelation that even when we think we’re in love, that feeling is probably moot if every time we look at the person, we have unpleasant thoughts about them. Or, as Twigs more succinctly outlined, “People always say, ‘Whoever you’re with, they should be a reflection of yourself.’ So, if you’re looking at someone and you think, ‘You’re a shitbag,’ then you have to think about why it was that person, at that time, and what’s connecting you both. What is the reflection? For others that have found a love that is a true reflection of themselves, they just remind me that I don’t have that, a mirrored heart.” At least she has a dog though. That’s usually the first logical step for a girl after an eviscerating breakup. Or one who can afford a dog, anyway, for we all know pet-owning is a bourgeois enterprise.
But before the dog, there comes the crippling depression occasionally mitigated by sad daytime masturbation, as evinced on the penultimate track, “daybed.” Punctuated by an organ-reminiscent opening, the lyrics read like lines of a Sylvia Plath poem (still one of the utmost authorities on eloquently conveying depression), including, “Possessive is my daybed/Vacant are my nightmares/Rest becomes my nowhere, yeah/Twenty is my vision/Only when I listen/Lower is my ceiling/Pressing are my feelings/Active are my fingers/Faux my cunnilingus.” For added good Plath measure, there’s also some mention of her father in there as well. Building like a slow burn that never quite reaches the crescendo of a high-burning flame (one supposes that’s a euphemism for orgasm), Twigs’ careful reserve throughout this song is imitative of the languor that comes with a depressive state.
One that persists–but is somewhat lifted (if the slight musical levity is a gauge)–on the immaculate “cellophane.” Already instantly iconic for its sci-fiesque video (didn’t she tell you sci-fi needs a hero like her?), in which Twigs debunks the myth of the tragedian stripper, the painfully delivered demand, “Didn’t I do it for ya?” is something we’ve all left as a drunk message before (some of us more emboldened to do so by voicemail than text).
Despite being a taut nine tracks, Magdalene feels just as long as it should be for someone to achieve her absolution from a particularly dark era. And, unlike Mary M, Twigs will not have to suffer being called a sinner for her “aesthetic” (on a side note Mary Magdalene was likely called a prostitute solely for being dark-skinned). One supposes that’s progress after so many of the centuries that men have spent wielding the one word “branding” that has ministered all women as “crazy” or “not credible.” But you can silence women no more… by calling them a whore.
