FKA twigs: "in time"

FKA twigs‘ “in time” inhabits several headspaces, all of them liminal. It slips into the scared, desperate place before a breakup, when both partners are high-strung and bereft; then moves on to that state of competing emotions, where one can only hope that her standing will somehow be clearer tomorrow. “In time you’ll learn to say sorry,” twigs sings in the opening lines, already hinging the song on an unspoken mistake, “and I will play tender with you.” She’s inducing an old maxim, but whether it’s for something real or imagined, whether it was ever worthwhile, is the loaded question lingering under it all.

twigs perfected this languished melancholia on last year’s LP1. Using the ruptured, pitch-shifted bones of trip-hop and electronic, she cornered the spots where loneliness and desire fuse into something both intimate and alien, particularly in relationships on the brink of collapse. “in time”, off her surprise-released EP M3LL155X, does something similar, only here, the agile voice that delivered threats and come-ons on LP1 breaks off, retooled with effects to sound ragged. Salvaging what she can while urging a lover to return in kind, it’s one of twigs’ most pronounced, stunning songs yet, melding its emotional messiness with a shuddering, stomping beat and whirling vocal samples that seem to circle her, closing in.

Listen at the 7:10 mark:

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