Following a long and enigmatic hiatus, FKA twigs has finally made her dazzling return with her new single "Cellophane." Complete with a wholly indescribable visual, the song represents a shift away from twigs’ trademark glitch and glitz. Stripped back and quite minimal, "Cellophane" is at once an aberration of over-stuffed art pop and a testament to the power of intensely experimental works by artists like Björk.
The similarities to Iceland’s preeminent cultural icon, though, do not stop there. The aforementioned music video was directed by Andrew Thomas Huang, who has overseen the production of a number of Björk’s own videos. His influence, while impactful, works in tandem with the visionary style of twigs herself. Showing off a newfound mastery of pole dancing, the video shows the English singer, dancer, and artist contorting and careening on a bare, golden stage. The video begins with the sharp clinks of her outrageous platform heels and ends with twigs painted in red clay, the camera capturing her exhausted breaths with intense intimacy. Though the visual effects are stunning, the performer’s movement still manages to steal focus.
The song itself relies on a somber and slightly altered piano melody. A ballad embellished with strained falsettos, it tells the story of a romance poked and prodded by outside forces. Twigs somehow combines the mystique of her persona with some of her most personal lyrics yet. She whimpers, “I don’t want to have to share our love… I try but I get overwhelmed”. This is a far cry from the expertly produced LP1, her only full studio album. While that project was unafraid to pack a multitude of otherworldly sounds into each song, this release prefers to pare down to the most vulnerable production of her entire catalog. It is an endlessly refreshing song in a world of near-constant chaos, something which few artists have been able to achieve in recent months.
Twigs announced the single’s release just yesterday following the reveal of a brief world tour spanning Los Angeles to Sydney, Australia. Her Instagram teased the new cover art, featuring a portrait of the singer adorned with metallic crosses and other trinkets. Though an official album announcement remains to be seen, the song seems to usher in a new era of the most grounded twigs we have seen yet. This transformation seems purposeful. Writing on Twitter, she said,
https://twitter.com/FKAtwigs/status/1120757389706371072?s=20
Following a song as uniformly gorgeous as this, we can’t wait to hear where this reinvention takes her.
Watch the new video for Cellophane by FKA twigs below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLjqFpBh84
