Each week, Consequence’s Songs of the Week roundup spotlights quality new tracks from the last seven days and analyzes notable releases. Find our new favorites and more on our Top Songs playlist, and for other great songs from emerging artists, check out our New Sounds playlist. This week, spiral into the entrancing new FKA twigs.
Avant-garde dance-electronica artist FKA twigs has developed a reputation for fearlessness. Her discography is characterized by some particularly experimental pockets, but with her latest LP, Eusexua, twigs plays with pop stardom in a more straightforward way than ever before. Pockets of the album recall Madonna; others signal the melodic comfort of figures like Sarah McLachlan, a comparison that would’ve felt like a head-scratcher prior to this project. She effectively balances enormous club bangers with a sense of vulnerability; as our own Paolo Ragusa put it, she’s crying in the club.
But Eusexua proves that the embrace of pop themes suits twigs, even if she never fully settles into a restrictive genre bracket. Throughout the album, she offsets gentler, more straightforward moments with intentionally sharp edges, never quite letting the listener settle. It’s a tool employed here on “Girl Feels Good;” once we’re lulled in by the entrancing beat and thoroughly charmed by the pulsing chorus calling us to the dance floor, things fall apart for just a moment as the overlay of synths become atonal and off-beat. As soon as the effect appears, though, it’s gone — and that sense of safety so briefly established is gone, too.
Lyrically, the thesis of the song is simple, but crucial, lifting a mirror to this idea of never quite being able to settle. “When a girl feels good, it makes the world go ’round/ When the night feels young, you know she feels pretty,” she sings. “Turn your love up loud to keep the devil down,” she implores, because seizing joy and indulging in pleasure can exist as worthy acts of resistance.
But it’s those moments where the musicality is off-kilter that serve as a reminder that escapism is not where the story ends. “Girl Feels Good” is a call to power as much as it is a request; specifically, twigs is urging for the desires of women to be centered, accompanied by the promise that this movement would well and truly make the world a better place. There’s freedom to be found on the dance floor, which can then be delivered out to the world in droves.
Earthly delights, the catharsis of a brief dance with a stranger, and above all, assurance of our own autonomy — that’s what really makes a girl feel good.
— Mary Siroky
Associate Editor
Cardboard — “Wouldn’t Let You Realize”
“Wouldn’t Let You Realize,” the third-ever single from London act Cardboard, taps into the same restless, grimy indie rock that made bands like early Arctic Monkeys so exciting. The tune carries with it a certain urgency, like if they don’t get all those snare hits and guitar licks in within the two-minute runtime something horrible might happen. At the same time, “Wouldn’t Let You Realize” is pure, unadulterated fun — a winning combo for a punked-up indie band. — J. Krueger
Cheekface — “Growth Sux”
America’s ever-prolific local band Cheekface are back once again with another wryly cheeky (ha!) indie rock tune that spits in the face of personal growth. Overtop a bouncy baseline and an almost indie sleaze-esque sequenced beat (which the band urges you not to hold against them), vocalist/guitarist Greg Katz sings lines like, “If you’ve always hated me, not that much has changed” and, “So why not let me be your soy boy.” In other words, it’s extremely Cheekface, and thank god for that. — Jonah Krueger