By Jessica Thrasher, Contributor

Score: 8/10

[Republic Records; 2025]

Key Tracks: “Girl Feels Good,” “Room of Fools” and “24hr Dog”

Eusexua, a term coined by Ms. FKA Twigs herself, is a combination of words ‘euphoria’ and ‘sex,’ and the record sets out to solicit the feeling of exactly that in its listeners. EUSEXUA as an album came to be after FKA Twigs experienced eusexua itself in the vibrant rave scenes of Prague, she said in a Spotify Countdown To conversation with Imogen Heap. She shared the people and places that colored her time there: “Collectively, we were like this amoeba of culture and expression and of letting go. And I just had this burning desire. If I couldn’t make people feel that, at least explain, invent, create a word in which they could imagine it. To be aware of there’s that thing that we can be.”

EUSEXUA is very much its own thing and original concept, but I detect a certain black-arial-font-on-noxious-green energy lurking about. I did not get a similar sound or execution from EUSEXUA and BRAT, except their sharing of the current dance music stage, all-caps styling and likely some distant musical influence. They also both captivated people with their authenticity and kept them around with blatant musical talent. The way that Twigs set out to capture the entire spectrum of what a single word can mean was similar to Charli xcx’s exploration of BRAT, except Twigs has provided her own vernacular for this piece.

Read more: Single Review: Lady Gaga – Abracadabra

The conceptual end of the album has received commentary and criticism for “getting lost in its own meaning,” and while I agree that some of the album is muddled by the attempted thought-provoking concepts, I thought the blueprints of the work were critical to the honest and raw creative delivery of the album. Twigs has embraced a more modern and wired sound in EUSEXUA but has maintained her ethereal tone and crepuscular mood she has cultivated prior in albums like MAGDALENE and CAPRISONGS.

“Girl Feels Good” is an exemplary track which showcases the computerized superlunar energy Twigs sought to capture. I would argue that this is eusexua in a nutshell (even more so than the title track, “Eusexua,”) which trickles down electrical wires to jolt and pull you in. A chill from the speed at which the album travels is to be anticipated, as it makes its rounds of the party; it doesn’t stay in one place for long at all. This track naturally basks in femininity and power and encourages the listener to do the same.  

“Room of Fools” does well to capture the scattered energy of a rave held in a sweaty, colorfully lit warehouse. The pieces of production fit together in a remarkably satisfying way, which was described by Heap as being granular, which can be noticed most in this track. “This room of fools/ We make something together/ We’re open wounds/ Just bleeding out the pressure.” The fools, being her fellow club goers and the bleeding being a liberating, physical release of the outside world’s mundanity and terrors.

Twigs uses her voice as an instrument in a way that most of today’s vocalists don’t. She can engage a flute-like timbre and precise vocal agility on a whim. She has a remarkably soft yet robust vocal style that she can shoot in any direction. She gives understated power and exquisite control in the first half of “Keep It, Hold It,” and throws it at the wall, giving in to the beat in the second half.

“Childlike Things” is a step or two down from the overall level of seriousness and offers a, inherently juvenile, playful respite from the contemplative rest of the album. Surprisingly, North West (yes, daughter of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West) is featured on this track to spit up some bars in Japanese. She says, “Hello, my name is North/ From California to Tokyo/ Jesus the King/ Praise God/ Jesus is the only true God.” On the conception of this track, Twigs talked more about her time in Prague’s club culture: “Things were coming up for me that I hadn’t felt in years since I was a child, like being able to dance funny, you know, being able to move my body in a very strange and incredible way. And that was completely fine in this club because everyone was doing the same thing.”

“Striptease” shows both sides of the sex and intimacy coin with sharp and spiky segments against smooth and sleek points of vulnerability, which will ultimately meet in the middle. “24hr Dog” is an appropriately subdued admittance of submission for one person. She utilizes a synth that wants you to feel hollow and incomplete, which is made slightly warmer by Twigs’ utter honesty. This is likely the most intimate track on EUSEXUA. On its development, she said, “there is something so incredible about being completely submissive to somebody and having that trust and that submission of your ego, whether that is in a romantic partnership or even creatively.”

A showcase of Twigs’ prodigious vocal talent appears in the final track, “Wanderlust.” She sings with palpable freedom and bliss that seems absent from the rest of the album. She seems to reach a blissful state of being, foretold at the start of the album, at the cost of some of the energy which had carried it.

I would like to use the exhausted comparison of this album to a roller coaster, though not represented by drastic highs and lows or genre shifts, it shares the smooth, buttery, seemingly divinely designed construction of an ultra-modern steel machine. She invites you on this 42-minute ride and beckons you to the dance floor. She invites you to dance with her, and dance she will, with or without you.

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