At an FKA twigs show, the curtains don’t just open once. Throughout a meticulously crafted 17-song set at Alexandra Palace, the singer-songwriter and pop aesthete plays constantly with concealment and dramatic reveal. At one point, her cloud-strewn backdrop falls away mid-song to reveal a cage of scaffolding behind her that contains her dancers and a previously unseen band, beating like a heart in an exposed ribcage. It’s a striking image for a show in which the performer oscillates between being the epitome of poise and laying painful emotions bare.
The audience are palpably thrilled to see FKA twigs back on stage: the mainstream-adjacent artist has been away for three years, during which time she had surgery to remove fibroids (benign tumours) from her uterus. Yet for a comeback show, the setlist is surprising: she does perform her radio hit Two Weeks at the climax, but the majority of the show is new material along with older, more subtle singles including Water Me and Papi Pacify. Of the new songs, the angsty, hip-hop-leaning Mary Magdalene is a clear standout, and sees her make use of her bolder, angrier lower register rather than the high pitch she’s known for.
A formidable dancer, she brings two new moves to the stage: swordsmanship and pole dancing. Both are stunning feats of physical strength, particularly her pole performance to the sex jam Lights On, from her 2014 album LP1. Her return to the song is marked by hard flexes of muscle and a new, menacing prowess.
Perhaps the most memorable moments of the show are those where she stands alone, in front of the closed curtains. Her intimacy with the crowd is intense – at one point, someone yells: “Thank you, twigs!” She had opened the show by tap-dancing solo and now she closes it by singing her new single Cellophane. On the latter, her voice climbs and cracks in ways that have never been heard from her before. Stepping out of her more controlled, perfectionist stage persona, FKA twigs signals the beginning of a refreshingly human new era.
