In Revue- 'M3LL155X' (FKA twigs)

I'll admit before I actually heard FKA twigs' surprise EP release M3LL155X my initial reaction was one of concern. Not for anything happening in the UK singer's life or the scant few details I had read about the album. Nay nay.

My concern was for how it would be received. It can be especially hard for artists who come out of the gate with such an assured, specifically styled album as twigs' LP1 to ever capture that zeitgeist again. When an artist brings such force so early, the public expectation machine can go haywire and nothing they do in the wake will live up. See Interpol for some of the "best" proof of the past decade or so. Hell I know people that still insist Kanye West's initial soul-rap period was his best, which is sort of frightening. People cling to first impressions way too much.

Fortunately that's not something to worry about with twigs' M3LL155X (pronounced Melissa). Working with Beyoncé producer Boots, twigs has crafted an album that stands alongside LP1, not in its shadow. There's no feeling of unnecessary duplication. The pair, along with producers Cy An and Tic, take the decaying drum machines and cacophonous noise of LP1 and project them farther outward. "Figure 8" starts with a terrifying low-end burble that gives credence to twigs' exhaling "It's a miracle we're still alive." Hollow ringing tubes hail "Glass & Patron," before a swarm of static comes flying through. Everything is pulverized by drums, which are loud and wobbly enough to cause heart arrhythmia.

That's even true of "In Time," the closest M3LL155X comes to an outright love song. "I will be better and we will be stronger and you will be greater," twigs declares with an uncertain resolve. She chest puffs "You've got a goddamn nerve," but that missive sits atop unstable keys and shifting drums. Nothing feels certain. The Weeknd's own dark R&B has been a comparison point before, but nowhere is the truer than on "In Time." Both artists have a way of sounding resolute, even when everything around them signals chaos. Twigs promises "I'll be home soon" in "Mothercreep"'s swirling outro, though she previously confesses "In words I lose" and "I don't know who my mother is." Realistically there's no home to go home to, just the false ideals of one.

So much of M3LL155X lyrically chases that idea of figuring out who you are when there's no template to go off of. In the aforementioned "Figure 8" she longs to live through someone else's "vice," before acknowledging "you're more alive than what I'll ever be." The admission's doubly painful delivered in a warped vocal that makes you think she's so world-weary she can't even muster the strength to sing for herself. That fragility carries over to "I'm Your Doll" a fetid electro "sex jam" with stereo-panning moans and lines such as "Complete me, I'm here alone." There's a cliché about sex that "you lose yourself in another person," but the character twigs inhabits doesn't seem to have anything to lose.

All of this might sound weak, but there's a profound strength in twigs' naked confessionals. It takes a lot to feel comfortable saying you're alone, especially when you're surrounded by people. Asking your partner to be better is difficult no matter what the relationship is. Though twigs sounds uncertain, it's clear from her latest effort that she knows exactly what she wants. 

In Revue- 'In Colour' (Jamie xx)

On paper, electronic/dance music shouldn't elicit any major emotional responses. They are styles intended to shut off synapses. You're supposed to "lose yourself to dance," as Pharrell commands. You get swept up in a tide of movement. Feet tap; heads nod, hips swing and thoughts disappear under the reflective, multi-colored lights of the dancefloor. Theoretically electronic/dance music focuses on the body and couldn’t give a damn about the brain.

Of course none of those theories are true. Since the earliest days of popular dance music, people like Donna Summer have confronted unwieldy emotions in their songs. Despite being robots, electronic pioneers Kraftwerk had to reckon with lust and disaffection. Just this past year Caribou mastermind Dan Snaith issued Our Love, one of the most heartfelt records of the decade. "You’re the only thing I think about," he sang on "Can't Do Without You." That's the sort of admission you'd expect in an emo-leaning acoustic track, not a clapping psych-groove.

I mention Our Love because it's perhaps the best musical analogy to what Jamie xx aims for on his impeccably beautiful, undeniably emotional debut In Colour. The cover is a subtle nod to his singles from the past few years, but it also signals the kaleidoscopic range of feelings that will hit you once you press play. In the span of a minute it's possible to sob to the shadowy bleeping of "Stranger in a Room" and then shudder in fear at "Hold Tight"'s industrial wasteland synths. Hearing them on a night-drive down abandoned metropolitan avenues is the type of thing that will haunt your dreams. 

The musical versatility of In Colour is magnificent. I've glided across a wet kitchen floor at 1am on a rainy Sunday morning to the giddy dancehall of "I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times)." The finger snaps are so on point, the calypso flavored drums so bright sounding and Young Thug's squealing so goofy that it is impossible not to rock to the infectious track. The hollered hook of "I know there’s gonna be good times," has the insistency of Daft Punk’s "One More Time."  From the muted side, the timid vocal stutters and harp plucks of "Sleep Sound" are perfect for soundtracking a slow trek through a Sun-covered forest. Romy Madley Croft collabo "Seesaw," one of three In Colour songs to feature Jamie xx's xx bandmates, will gently waft out of plenty of couples’ bedrooms before summer ends. Madley Croft's whispers over the song’s scattered programming make hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Her echoing voice is that tantalizing. 

This is someone who got started with the xx though, so those high cresting waves of emotion have to crash at some point. And they do during centerpiece "Loud Places," which also pairs xx with Madley Croft. She sings "you're in ecstasy without me, when you come down I won't be around," after an army of voices singing "I feel music in your eyes, I have never reached such heights," disappears. The song’s central conceit of finding a person in a loud place to share quietude with is something Madley Croft commits to. So you hear the desperation in her voice when she realizes that’s not what a former love wants anymore. They want to go to new places with someone new. Without being hyperbolic, the way Jamie xx contrasts this is genius. Her exhalations come over brittle ringing piano keys while her former flame’s new-found club hopping is secured by stinging guitar lines and colossal drum machine strikes. Each one is a more stunning blow to the heart than the last. Even when she gets off that aforementioned missive you sense it's from a place of profound defeat.  

"Loud Places" is worth dedicating an entire paragraph to, but the same could be said for any of In Colour's 11 tracks because there isn't a lackluster effort among the bunch. "Gosh"'s mangled "oh my gosh" vocals and 2-step garage work are just what you want out of an opener: insistent, palpitating and scene-setting, the type of song to kickstart festival sets with. "Hold Tight," perhaps the "slightest" of the songs, is an ideal buffer between the emotional onslaughts of "Stranger in a Room" and "Loud Places." The piano droplets of penultimate number "The Rest is Noise" are reflective without overthinking things. Chain rattling closer "Girl" has such an immediate cut-off that you’re forced into hitting repeat just to confirm your file isn’t corrupted. I imagine Jamie xx filled up several wastebaskets with rejected track lists before settling on this inscrutable sequencing. There isn’t a single hair out of place.


Which is a marvel when you consider how messy the ideas are that Jamie xx is dealing with. Love, loss, longing, ecstasy, joy, happiness, regret, fear and betrayal aren't easy to convey, especially when you're mostly limited to instrumentals. Jamie xx manages the feat though. He’s 26 but the near-perfect In Colour belies his age. This is the kind of album that could only be made by someone with eons of experience. An individual who has been through ringer. A person who is well aware that no form of music is better for such wide-ranging expressionism.