Caprisongs

10th March 2022

FKA Twigs can do anything. She is her own genre and everything she makes never ceases to amaze me. Caprisongs was no exception. I’m not normally a fan of projects with this many features, but every collaboration truly feels like an authentic joint effort between Twigs and her friends. The mixtape dips its toe into a plethora of genres, pulling different elements from different sounds here and there to create one of her best works. It’s accompanied by Twigs and her friends gushing about the unrequited love of their youth and a lot of these moments feel immersed into the beats and this can be especially heard on track girl interlude, which I thought was quite interesting. Many artists these days have used voice notes of some kind in their music but I truly felt like Twigs and her producers have really been able to make them mesh into the music.

“I made you a mixtape” in FKA Twigs enchanting voice is such an enticing way to begin this journey she goes through. Caprisongs feels like an amusement park, each song a different ride. Her collaborators sat are always sat in the seat next to her, never behind. In honda (feat. pa salieu) and papi bones (feat. shygirl), there are glorious moments that feel like a game of tennis between both Pa Salieu and Shygirl and FKA Twigs, where they’re bouncing back and forth between each other which indicates to me that they’ve enjoyed working, not just with eachother, but together.

Darjeeling is another highlight for me, who would’ve thought we’d get a drill track from FKA Twigs? Unknown T was definitely the perfect person from that genre to enlist for this song. I feel like Jorja Smith adjusted her writing style to fit Twigs which I think worked quite well. Jealousy with Rema is another song that showed me her range. It makes you want to get up and dance and I truly believe it’s an excellent contender for the song of the summer. Afrobeats, drill, grime and dancehall are genres I didn’t even know Twigs could tap in to as her previous works are a lot more avant-garde and electronic, but Caprisongs has definitely showed me to never underestimate FKA Twigs.

Now, tears in the club (feat. the weeknd) and careless (feat. daniel caesar) pull from pop and R&B respectively, but I felt like these were easier genres for Twigs to slide into as I think her vocals on previous projects have demonstrated that her voice definitely has the ability perform well on these genres. And by no means do I think that Twigs has made a complete drill song or a complete dancehall song and so on, i.e. one true and typical of the genre, however I do think she’s mastered the craft of genre-bending and has demonstrated so well how she can pull from an amalgamation of genres and make each song her own. As I said before, FKA Twigs is her own genre, but I don’t think artists within her realm can float on the genres mentioned like she can and that is what sets her apart from the rest and makes her music so powerful.

My favourite solo song of hers was definitely oh my love. I felt the chorus unlocked part of my adolescence and memories of unrequited love, not just in the lyrics but also in the way she belts out this part. I think the catchy hook and emotion that we’ve all felt before makes this a fan favourite. I also feel like Twigs can write any lyric and however she decides to bring those words to life, sonically, it’s always going to be fantastic. Personally, I don’t think anyone else could sing the same lyrics and have it sound good, the peculiarness is so tailored to Twigs and I feel that if it were anybody else it wouldn’t have been as widely received. I never felt that the sequencing mattered all too much, besides thank you song. A shift in emotions to conclude the tape is something you don’t quite expect, it feels incredibly personal, the emotions come truly from the heart.

The mixtape is definitely going in my top 10 records of the year, I don’t think we’ll see anything remotely similar to this tape for a while. I really feel like it was a development of her song holy terrain (feat. future), to be honest if that song was on this mixtape instead of MAGDALENE, I would never feel like it didn’t belong. This mixtape has made me incredibly excited for Twigs' next project because it’s really illustrated what she can do, which I’ve concluded, is anything.