#Robert pattinson slayed his role

[wigglysloth]

Saw the boy and the heron recently and i couldn’t get this composition idea out of my head :D

[kordeliiius]

unironically I think they should cast robert pattinson in the next voice-acted LN project. It’d be hilarious if he was the one to give life to the north wind, but I think he’d slay any role he got. if his next prank was telling people he voiced the ferryman in TSON I’d believe him

little nightmares 🤝 boy and the heron

bird lore

[adevotedappraisal]

Magdalene by FKA Twigs, a review.

I’ve been learning some shit from women from as long as I’ve been alive. Always some other shit that I never asked for but I got told it.  I used to treat them things they said as laws as a child, but I never saw them in a book, so then I stopped believing them.  They were always hushed laws though, laws told with squinted eyes and italicized whispers, laws told when no one else was around.

I mean, now of course men make the real laws that we know and live by.  Well come on now, we write them on parchment, and display them on lights, we code them into computers, inscribe them on coins and stone. But these women…man women tell you some other shit, like glue shit, in low, muttered tones in the quiet part of the house.  Like advice on… well not how the world works, but how to deal with the world when it works against you, and how to make it work for you. But you see, I’ve come to believe that the fairer sex tells you different laws than the vaunted laws and advice of our fathers because they all around see the world differently than men do.  They may, in fact, have been harbouring different goals than us all along.  

I mean for christssakes us men have our hero’s journey as clear as day, writ large and indelible across history books and entertainment.  You could take that Joseph Campbell mono-myth theory and see it expressed in Arthurian swash-buckle, the middle earth ring-slaying of Tolkien, or in the recently concluded tri-trilogy of Star Wars galactic clashes.  We’re in the empire business, as Breaking Bad’s Walter White infamously said.  But still, the question always lingered to me: what is the heroine’s journey? Is it really just a lady in a knight’s armour? Or some tough-as-nails spy for some interloping government’s intelligence agency, delivering kidney kicks in a designer pencil skirt?

Well, I’ve come to believe that the heroine’s journey is navigating the waves of history we imperial and trans-national men make from our railroads and pipelines, our satellites and wars, them at once preserving a culture and sparking a path and creating a bond between cultures in order for them and their (il)legitimate brood to survive.  That old chestnut about how behind every successful man is a woman always unnerved me by its easy adoption. I kept thinking ‘bout that woman.  I kept thinking, what the fuck was she thinking?

You see women’s heroes, they ain’t as clear as day to me.  They don’t kill the dragon, they don’t save the townspeople, they don’t shoot the Sherriff, or the deputy, or anyone most times. When I ask people in public at my job what super power they would like, most men go for strength, flight, and regenerative abilities (my pick).  Most women went with mind reading and flight. In late night conversations though, with the moonlight coming through the white blinds and resting soft on us like so, I sometimes manage to hear that women’s heroes heal and clean the sick of the nation, in sneakers with heels as round as a childhood eraser; they feed a family with one fish and five slices of wonder bread; they would run gambling spots in the back of their house, putting the needle back on the Commodores record and patrolling the perimeter of the smoked-out room with a black .45 nested by their love handles; they climb up flag poles and speak out loud in public for the disposed and teach children those unwritten, floating laws while cloistered in the quiet part of the house.  

Although their heroines are sometimes from the top strata of society –a Pharaoh here, an Eleanor Roosevelt there, an Oprah over there—they also name a healthy mix of radicals and weirdos with modest music success, people like Susan B. Anthony, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, or Nikki Giovanni, I mean did Nina Simone or Janis Joplin even crack the Billboard top ten? Yet there they are, up on the walls of a thousand college dorms across the country.  So even though I couldn’t’ve foreseen it, it makes sense that of all the ultra-natural creatures, of all the great conquering kings and divining prophets of the Holy Bible, Mary Magdalene ends up the spirit animal for the album of the year for 2019.

Mary Magdalene was a follower of Jewish Rabbi Jesus during the first century, according to the four Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, a figure who was present for his miracles, his crucifixion and was the first to witness him after his resurrection.  From Pope Gregory I in the sixth century to Pope Paul VI in 1969, the Roman Catholic Church portrayed her as a prostitute, a sinful woman who had seven demons exorcised from her.  Medieval legends of the thirteenth century describe her as a wealthy woman who went to France and performed miracles, while in the apocryphal text The Gospel of Mary, translated in the mid-twentieth century, she is Jesus’ most trusted disciple who teaches the other apostles of the savior’s private philosophies.

Due to this range of description from varying figures in society, she gets portrayed in differing ways, by all types of women, each finding a part of Magdalene to explain themselves through.  Barbra Hershey, in the first half of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) plays her as a firm and mysterious guide, a rebellious older cousin almost, while Yvonne Elliman, in Norman Jewison’s 1973 film adaptation of Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar is lovelorn and tender throughout, a proud witness of the Word being written for the first time.  In “Mary Magdalene,” FKA Twigs, the Birmingham UK alt-soul singer, describes the woman as a “creature of desire”, and she talks about possessing a “sacred geometry,” and later on in the song she tells us of “a nurturing breath that could stroke you/ divine confidence, a woman’s war, unoccupied history.” Her vocals that sound glassy and spectral in the solemn echoes of the acapella first third, co-produced by Benny Blanco, turn sensual and emotive when the blocky groove kicks in.  That groove comes into its own on the Nicolas Jaar produced back third, and when this all is adorned with plucked arpeggios it sounds like an autumnal sister to the wintry prowl of Bjork’s “Hidden Place” from her still excellent Vespertine (2001). 

This blending of the affairs of the body and of Christian theology is found in the moody “Holy Terrain” as well.  While it is too hermetic and subdued to have been an effective single, it still works really well as an album track.  In this arena, Future is not the hopped up king of the club, but a vulnerable star, with shaded eyes and a heart wrapped up in love and chemicals, sending his girl to church with drug money to pay tithes.  Over a domesticated trap beat he shows a vulnerable bond that can exist, wailing his sins and his devotion like a tipsy boyfriend does in the middle of a party, or perhaps like John the Baptist did, during one of his frenzied sermons, possessed and wailing “if you pray for me I know you play for keeps, calling my name, calling my name/ taking the feeling of promethazine away.”

Magdalene, the singer’s sophomore release, takes the mysterious power and resonance of this biblical anti-heroine, and involves its songs with her, these emotional, multi-textured songs about fame, pain and the break up with movie star boyfriend Robert Pattinson.  With “Sad Day,” Twigs sings with a delicate yet emotional yearning, imbued with a Kate Bush domesticity. The synth pads are a pulsing murmur, and the vocal samples are chopped and rendered into lonely, twisting figures.  The drums crash in only every once in a while, just enough to reset the tension and carve out an electronic groove, while the rest of the thing is an exercise in mood and restraint, the production by twigs, Jaar and Blanco, along with Cashmere Cat and Skrillex, leaves her laments cosseted in a floating sound, distant yet dense and tumultuous, the way approaching storm clouds can feel.   Meanwhile “Thousand Eyes” is a choir of Twigs, some voices cluttered and glittering, some others echoed and filled with dolour. “If you walk away it starts a thousand eyes,” she sings, the line starting off as pleading advice and by the close of the song ending up a warning in reverb, the vintage synths and updated DAWs used to create these sparse, aural haunts where the choral of shes and the digital ghosts of memory can echo around her whispered confessional.

In many of these divorce albums, the other party’s role in the conflict is laid bare in scathing terms: the wife that “didn’t have to use the son of mine, to keep me in line” from Marvin Gaye’s Here My Dear from 1979; the players who “only love you when they’re playin’” as Stevie Nicks sang on Fleetwood Macs Rumours (1977); or as Beyonce’s Lemonade (2017) charges, the husband that needs “to call Becky with the good hair.”   At first though, Twigs is diplomatic, like in “Home with me,” where she lays the conflict on both sides here, expressing the rigours of fame, the miscommunication –accidental or intentional –that fracture relationships, and the violent, tenuous silence of a house where one of the members is in some another country doing god knows what, physically or mentally. “I didn’t know you were lonely, if you’d just told me I’d be home with you,” she sings in the chorus over a lonely piano, while the verse sections have the piano chords flanked by blocks of glitch, and littered with flitched-off synths. Then, the last chorus swirls the words again, along with the strings and horns and everything into a rising crescendo of regret.

Later in the album however, her anger once smoldering is set alight, in the dramatic highlight “Fallen Alien.” Twigs sings with an increasing tension, as her agile voice morphs from confused, pouting girlfriend to towering lady of the manor, launching imprecations towards a past lover and perhaps fame itself. “I was waiting for you, on the outside, don’t tell me what you want ‘cuz I know you lie,” she sings, and, after the tension ratchets up becomes “when the lights are on, I know you, see you’re grey from all the lies you tell,” and then later on we have her sneering out loud “now hold me close, so tender, when you fall asleep I’ll kick you down.”  All while pondering pianos drop like rain from an awning, tick-tocking mini-snares and skittering noises flit across the beat like summer insects, the kicks of which are like an insistent, inquisitive knocking at the door, and then there’s that sample, filtered into an incandescent flame, crackling an  I FEEL THE LIGHTNING BLAST! all over the song like the arc of a Tesla coil. The song is a shocking rebuke, and it becomes apparent upon replays that the songs are sequenced to lead up to and away from it, the gravitational weight giving a shape and pace to the whole album.  Because of this, the other songs on Magdalene have more tempered, subtle electronic hues and tones, as if the seductive future soul of 2013s “Water Me” from EP2, and the inventive, booming experimentation of “Glass & Patron” from 2015s M3LL1SSX, were pursed back and restrained until it was needed most, and this results in an album more accomplished, nuanced and focused than her impressive but inconsistent debut LP1 (reviewed here).  

This technique of electronic restraint has shown up in the most recent albums by experimental pioneers, with the sparse, mournful tension of Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool (2017), it’s cold, analog synths and digital embellishments cresting on the periphery of the song, and with Wilco’s Ode to Joy from last year, an album bereft of their lauded static and electric scrawl, mostly embossed in acoustic solitude and brittle, wintery guitar licks.  Twigs and her co-producers take the same knack for the most part throughout the album, like with closer “Cellophane,” where the dramatic voice and piano are in the forefront, while effects crunch lightly in the background like static electricity in a stretched sweater, and elsewhere, as the synths of “Daybed” slowly intensify into a sparkling soundscape, as if manufacturing an awakening sunrise through a bedroom window.  And it is this seamless melding of organic and electronic instruments, to express these wretched and fleeting emotions of heartbreak that makes this the album of the year.

It makes sense that an artist like FKA Twigs would be drawn to a figure like Mary Magdalene.  Of the many Marys in the New Testament, she stuck out as palpably different, or rather, she depicted a differing part of womanhood than the other two.  She wasn’t the chaste, life-giving mother of Jesus, or the dutiful Mary of Clopas. Instead, Magdalene was this mixture of sexuality and spirituality, one of those figures that managed to know men and women in equal measure, wrapped up with the blood as well as the flesh.  Twigs also played with this enrapturing sexuality in her work, writhing around in bed begging some papi to pacify her and fuck her while she stared at the sun, then making you identify with the lamentations of video girls, and then telling you in two weeks you won’t even recognize who you were seeing before.  There was something mysterious and layered to her millennial art-chick sexpot act though, layers that have begun to be revealed with this album.  

We realise now, that what she was depicting all along was more like the sexual heat that lays underneath devotion, as opposed to fleeting, mayfly lust, and that she now understands the weight and half-life of love.  That is, that beyond the sex and patron and fame there is a near sacred love we build between each other for a while in time, lasting as long as both hands can bear to hold it, and also that the death of a relationship still has the memory of the love created warm within it that then radiates off slow into the air.  A love that then falls into our minds for safekeeping dark and unobstructed now, the way Jesus’ blood fell from his wound into Joseph of Arimathea’s grail held aloft.  

“I never met a hero like me in a sci-fi,” FKA Twigs sings, an evocative line less so for the hegemonic patriarchy of the worldwide movie and comic book industry suggested by ‘the sci-fi’ here, and more for the ‘hero like me’ part, which suggests she had to make her hero origin story all up, without the scaffolding of centuries of relatable mythologies, presenting us with an avatar of millennial love, in all of its tortured luster.  And you hear this type of love in her voice, no longer changed up and ran through a filter for Future Soul sophistication most times, but out in the open now, to express particular emotions, whether it’s in that swooping, falling ‘I’ in the heart-break closer “Cellophane,” or her assured realisation, later on “Home With Me” where she says “But I’d save a life if I thought it belonged to you/ Mary Magdalene would never let her loved ones down.”  

It’s never about how to conquer with these women you see.  In the end of all relationships it’s how they find their way out after us temporarily embarrassed conquerors are about to leave, jacket slung over shoulder, standing by the door. You squint your eyes back at her this time, and you listen this time, while she tells you, or tells the ground in front of you, what parts of love to let go of, and what parts are worth holding on to in this age of Satan, the parts that will help you become yourself. “I wonder if you think that I could never help you fly,” the song tells you then, one of those stinging admissions that only women come up with, and you wisely stay silent, and then the piano chords part, the synths subside. And for a while there as she looks at you, as the breathy sortilege in the song keeps going, it all sounds like something worth believing in again.  And then, the words she says to you start to come across like laws.

[jesse-eisenberg-interview]

Jesse Eisenberg Becomes an Action Figure in Zombieland

Posted: October 2, 2009.

For 26 year old actor Jesse Eisenberg –who was awarded lots of attention for his troubled teenager in The Squid and the Whale – becoming a zombie-killing machine offers a curious shift in gears. Interspersed with his first-person voiceover as the wussy Columbus, Zombieland spotlights two survivors who forge an uneasy alliance to live in a world destroyed by a plague that turns nearly everyone into zombies. Both are trying to get east to see if anyone is free of the infection. The multiweapon-toting, bad-ass Tallahassee (the darkly funny Woody Harrelson) distrusts bonding as much as he hates zombies – but that's only because he doesn't want to pummel a friend if they've morphed into the living dead.

At first bamboozled by sisters Wichita (Emma Stone) and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), they establish a relationship with this duo to form a dysfunctional and desperate ersatz family. All four have found their own ways to vanquish zombies, so when the sisters steal the boys' SUV and guns, they catch up to the girls and go along with their determined effort to visit their favorite amusement park in California.

This wry, macabre horror comedy not only brings out the mayhem-making on Eisenberg's part, it shows he's capable of spoofing the kind of post-collegiate, sexually repressed nervous wreck he played so well in Adventureland who, lo and behold, worked in a local amusement park. And, if it's successful, he will be doing a lot more than just the San Diego Comic-con and the recent Fantastic Fest in Austin. Ironically though, as Eisenberg admits in this exclusive one-on-one interview, he's more of an art house rather than genre fan and proud of it. Maybe his next few roles – as Allen Ginsberg in Kill Your Darlings or possibly, as the founder of Facebook – may better suit him, but I think he has a long future in geekdom.

You're a healthy 20-something. How have you avoided watching your share of horror movies? Maybe you read little too many Greek tragedies.  I saw a performance of The Bacchae by Euripides the other day and that could be translated into a horror film.

My friend directed a Greek play and then he did like a horror movie version of it. It's not actually that different. I just don't really like horror movies. They're either scary, or if they're not scary, they're terrible. If they're not scary then they're a failure, and if they are scary then they scare you. So either way, you kind of walk out lost. But this movie is really not that. As you saw last night, it's mostly comedic, and it's a real fun experience. The horror of it is really secondary.

Now that you've done this movie, and you're a zombie-slayer, are you going to investigate a lot more horror films?

I have my own narrow view of cinema, but no, not really.

You've got to see Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn with the slaying of the vampires, or John Carpenter's Vampires. Bride of Frankenstein is one of the great movies of all time. Didn't making this film intrigue you as to what is behind the psychology of horror films like the old Universal pictures? What would you want to see?

I'm sure they're great. There was a movie out last year that everyone said to go see, called Let the Right One In.

The Swedish vampire movie.

Is it really good?

It's great. For those who like indie films, you get your dose of indie art from of it. It's teen angst via the vampire genre without too much teen idol-making. Now that you've done the kind of movie that might make you a teen idol, are you worried that Robert Pattinson's Twilight fans will switch over to you?

That's not my nature or the character in this movie. The only people that will be interested in me from this movie will be grandmothers, and they don't have websites. No, I think there's no threat.

You don't think that you've made a valid play for Wichita (Emma Stone) to fall madly in love with you?

Yeah, but he's not that kind of character. Thank God because who wants to be in the tabloids for anything, ever.

If this movie does well, you're going to be doing lots of comic-cons and things like that now.

I know. I realize that... I know.

Do you collect anything that you might find at the comic-cons so you should be looking forward to them?

I had no idea what anything was there. We had to go to this year's [San Diego Comic-con]. I was out of my element.

You didn't get turned onto any cool graphic novels?

No. They couldn't be further from my comfort zone.

You must collect something. What do you collect?

I don't know. I don't have any space for anything. We have collector's half-photos of Fidel Castro at my house. I don't know why. We have like three amazing collector's editions.

How did you separate yourself from the character which plays on the type of characters you've done?

All the acting is very naturalistic, so it seems like we're all these people. It takes a lot of effort to establish this tone of this movie. The movie asks a lot of you comedically in a very specific world and in a very specific way. It's a unique world that the movie takes place in. I don't see the character as exactly like myself, but I'm sure when people see the movie they will think that. Until one acts in a movie, they realize that it requires effort, even if it looks very natural or casual.

When you do a movie like this – you've handled guns, kicked ass on zombies – how does it change you? Are you inspired to be more of an ass kicker in some way?

No. I don't want to be promoting violence to children or making it look fun. Luckily, my character does not want to shoot people. He might close a door on this girl's foot and she's trying to kill me, and I'll say, "I'm so sorry that I hurt your foot." I'm glad that my character and I cannot have too much fun with the violence. People are going to see this movie that maybe have a proclivity towards violence, and we wouldn't want to make it look that much fun where it's inadvertently promoting it.

Woody does a damn good job of making it seem like it's a lot of fun. It brought out your inner shit-kicker. Do you think you're going to get offers now to do a lot more shit-kicking as a result?

No, no, I don't think so, nor am I interested in that. It's exhausting and technically difficult to shoot scenes like that. The scenes that I'm interested in are the scenes where we're creating these characters. These other scenes, half the time the stunt guy is doing the thing that's the most fun looking.

If you had to smash anything like you did in the film, if you had that opportunity to smash as a result of the freedom to smash, what would you have had in mind?

Probably a laptop computer, because you know how frustrating it is when it's not doing the thing you asked it to do. It's the most frustrating thing in the world, and you just want to throw it against the wall. It would probably feel good for one second – and after that, terrible. Again, the things that are most fun to watch are usually the things that are the most difficult to shoot. When we were filming the scene where we destroyed this store, you had to be very careful. Then when you watch it, it looks like the characters are having fun so spontaneously. But it's a difficult thing to shoot. It's so much fun to watch so you can relive it, almost, through your characters.

Did you discuss a back story as to how the zombie plague began? Did you elaborate – just for fun – on whether it was some sort of biological experiment?

It changed so much over the course. At first, we weren't sure if people would be interested in knowing the back story. Then we did the test screenings of it and realized people actually want to know where it came from. So the final verdict is that it's now like a mad cow disease. It came from contaminated hamburger, which is good because it has some kind of possible practical implications toward the food industry. Woody is really happy with that because he's a strict vegan.

Harrelson is an incredibly naturally funny guy. I don't know how you get on set with him without breaking up all the time. Abigail Breslin can be funny too. But you must have had some interesting conversations with him, because he's got that passionate, serious side about politics, philosophy, and other things?

I've admired him for many years. I work with a few animal rights organizations, I've been vegetarian for five years and I was vegan for a year. I'm not a vegan right now, but when we were filming I ate all the same food he ate.

You had so much fun with Woody there, that you must love to have a chance to work with him again. Do you see that as a possibility?

Yeah, I would love to. He kind of cast me in this, so I owe him a lot and would love to.

Not only as a result of this movie, but are there people you'd like to act with or work with? Now you've done such an interesting range of people, you're moving on to a new plateau.

Yeah, that's exactly it. I would never think that I would get to meet Woody Harrelson. It always ends up being more shocking than you would have expected had you tried to fantasize about it.

Do you ever sit there and fantasize about who you would have as your leading ladies?

No, I'm surprised that they stay on the set after they meet me. As you're well aware, I'm more than lucky.

It must have been fun working with Emma. Did you know her from before? She really doesn't take seriously that role of the sex kitten, zombie-slayer. It must have been fun to work with her.

It's a great asset to the movie that she's not the typical hot girl. She's an incredibly funny person. The character that she has is a very strong and self-respecting female character, which is not the most common thing – especially in a movie like this, a horror-comedy.

You're lucky that you've been able to get some really great directors. Are there people you want to target? Writers you want?

No. Once you start doing that, you just open yourself up to disappointment, because it doesn't work that way. It's best to just be open minded to whatever new opportunities present themselves, like in this case.

You must have thought about sequels.

No, no, I haven't. If you'd asked me a week ago if I wanted to do a sequel, I would say that would definitely be the last thing that I would ever want to do. In fact, they asked me when I originally signed up for the movie, "Could you sign on for a sequel now?" I asked my lawyer at the time, "Please, please, don't agree to something like that," because the worst thing you want to be doing is a sequel to a movie that no one likes. When I saw the movie the other night for the first time in Miami, I was so blown away. I think it would be a great thing to do.

When you envision that sequel, can you imagine all the possible places to go, like zombies in New York versus zombies in LA?

I would love to do that, too, because I wouldn't have to leave home to film it. That's exactly right; there's so much you could do. Although I imagine zombies in New York would be so much more expensive they'll probably end up doing zombies in Tulsa. But there are so many possibilities because there's such a free-flowing logic to the movie.

You were pretty young when you started, and you've naturally evolved. Where do you want to go from here? You've done comedies, but they're with a more indie heart to them then some of the raunchy buddy stuff that Judd Apatow's produced and directed. Where do you see yourself going now that you've added this into the catalog?

Well, I never expected to be in a movie like this. But because the script was so good, I wanted to. So I guess it's just project to project, regardless of what the genre is or the size of the movie. I feel like if it's good, then that stuff is really not relevant, and that's what I felt about this. I mean they're sending me a lot of movies that are similar to this because people are liking this movie, but they're awful. I have plays that I've written that I'm trying to get done, and it's certainly helpful to be in movies that people see. The next movies I'm supposed to do happen to be dramas, but if something like this came along again I'd be happy to do it.

What about directing and other things?

That's a whole different [story], to actually have some command of authority, and I don't have any of that.

But then you'd rise to the occasion.

I suppose you could, but you need a deep voice or something.

Oh, you're undervaluing your magnetic and influential skills.

Thank you, but you're the same person that wanted to see an action figure of me.

SOURCE

[lunapaper]

Album Review: ‘MAGDALENE’ - FKA twigs

Only in recent times has Mary Magdalene been vindicated. 

Long portrayed in the New Testament as a former prostitute, it wasn’t until 1969 when the Catholic Church finally restored her reputation, and in 2016 a feast day declared in her honour by Pope Francis. In fact, she may have been a woman of ‘greater social status’ and was a close confidant of Jesus, who stood by him even when many of his disciples did not. Some even believe they were lovers.

Even centuries later, the story remains the same, one FKA twigs sadly identifies with in the wake of her own high-profile relationship with ex-fiancé Robert Pattinson – defamed by the tabloids and defined only by her connection to a man.

But unlike Magdalene, the British singer (born Tahliah Barnett) is the driving force behind her own salvation on her long-awaited second album, building on the ‘personal feminine energy’ of 2015’s M3LL115X EP while displaying great strength in the face of immense scrutiny.

With a ‘thousand eyes’ upon her, Barnett is already on the precipice as drowsy reverb rumbles beneath her feet. On ‘home with you,’ sparse piano and synths embrace her, describing the ‘fruit bowl of pain’ she experienced when she had six fibroid tumours removed from her uterus in late 2017, all varying in size.

Though by laying her flaws and weaknesses bare, Barnett does not let them define her. As she later remarks: ‘Never seen a hero like me in a sci-fi,’ arguably where the crux of the album lies. She recently told Pitchfork, echoing my own sentiments:

‘I sometimes find that a certain type of enforced empowerment is very oppressive […] I mean, I am powerful and independent—and incredibly vulnerable and sensitive. As a woman of color, this idea that I need to be a Nubian queen all the time is very stressful. I do find it problematic to always feel like your icons are always strong and always OK. If that is somebody’s idea of slaying in this time, it’s wildly off the mark.’

Especially in the current landscape of ‘woke’ reboots, a ‘strong’ female character is recognised only in terms of her physical strength. She can’t be too feminine otherwise she’s submitting to tradition gender roles. She can’t be too sexual otherwise she’s just objectifying herself. She can’t be too emotional otherwise she’ll be seen as ‘weak.’ She must feel empowered 24/7.

The biggest irony of all is that most of these criticisms – at least in my experience - come from other women or overly-eager male feminists, especially if you happen to spend more than five minutes on the vicious cesspool known as Twitter. A ‘strong’ female character just can’t be a rich, multifaceted being. Mary Magdalene herself is presumed to have been many things – lover, confidant, sinner – but she’s never been allowed to be all these things at once, with individual thoughts, feelings and desires.

Later, Barnett is ‘possessive of my daybed,’ providing a woozy yet claustrophobic glimpse of depression while in recovery, involving existential angst and empty masturbation, while on ‘fallen alien,’ cracks form, a visceral, unnerving cut that has the singer ready to raise hell in this ‘age of Satan’ as she spits: ‘Don't tell me what you want 'cause I know you lie.’

As well, she unleashes on ‘mary magdalene’: ‘Oh, you didn’t hear me now/Oh, you didn’t hear me when I told you’ with a seductive throb of bass over shifting, industrialised beats, reminiscent of Barnett’s unabashed bravado on previous hits like ‘Two Weeks’ and ‘In Time.’

‘cellophane’ – the album’s crown jewel – meanwhile, is devastatingly beautiful, probably the most haunting critique of rabid Twilight stans you’ll ever hear. ‘They wanna see us, wanna see us alone/They wanna see us, wanna see us apart,’ spoken like an eerie mantra as the singer struggles to keep a grip of an already fragile love, the dream slowly turning into a nightmare as it descends into a distorted mass of sound, with a thousand eyes upon twigs, finally crumbling under the pressure: ‘They're waiting/They're watching/They’re watching us/They're hating/They're waiting/And hoping/I'm not enough.’

Not all tracks prove as captivating (the pleasant but repetitive ‘sad day,’ the rather benign ‘holy terrain’ with Future), yet MAGDALENE is near perfect in its execution. Where her 2014 debut LP1 was brittle yet seductive and M3LL115X sharply defiant, FKA twigs’ sophomore album is a spiritual experience if not overtly religious, weaving nature and celestial motifs through unearthly choral tones. 

But most importantly, the singer reclaims her own narrative and that of every woman scorned, broken and damned. MAGDALENE is not only FKA twigs at her most divinely feminine; it’s also her most human work yet. As she proudly states: ‘A woman’s work/A woman’s prerogative/A woman’s time to embrace/She must put herself first.’

- Bianca B.