Things Break Down: FKA Twigs doesn’t make your daddy's R&B

FKA Twigs (formerly known as Tahliah Barnett) doesn’t make R&B, or at least not the way your daddy knows it. Those who link the British singer-songwriter to trip-hop or dubstep are making the point that her taste in production is avant-garde (enough that she works with the likes of Arca) and that her composition style is unorthodox and difficult to absorb or latch on to.

Always on LP1 (XL), she is offering herself up: a passage of rhythm you feel in your stomach, a sonic that makes you rewind, a lyric of clarity (“When I trust you, we can do it with the lights on”). Always these things break down, or a new sound effect emerges from the deep bass — the one consistent feature — to disjoint the whole. And the songs move on.

All of this signifies as R&B (of the new-wave variety, no doubt) because Barnett’s voice has that familiar thinness of air, touch of sensuality and word- and tone-bending moan that lies at the base of the soaring melisma that has come to define the genre — and which Barnett rejects as a matter of aesthetic survival. If allure is to be measured in vocal runs, emotional excess and feigned loss of control, what can be done that Beyoncé, Mariah, et al haven’t already done?

LP1 teaches you how to listen to it, shows glimpses of its confused and lonely heroines, leaves you grasping at its fragments. But even in that illusory atmosphere, two tracks stand out defiantly: “Two Weeks,” a stunning hit allowed to drift just enough off its time signature during the hook to temporarily disorient the ear, and “Closer,” with a choral music delivery that’s a wonder to hear. On these songs FKA Twigs achieves a level of intensity too good for even her to resist.