In the last few seconds of the music video for “Perfect Stranger,” released last October by FKA twigs, three sentences flash on the screen. They read: “Eusexua is a practice. Eusexua is a state of being. Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience.” At that point, Twigs had already announced her then-forthcoming third studio album, but the mantra left viewers with an important question:

What does any of this mean?

It’s unclear. A term she coined herself, Twigs describes eusexua as “…that feeling when you’ve been dancing all night and you lose seven hours to music. It’s also if you meet somebody that you really like, and you just kiss all night, and you kiss for all hours. You lose time.” Because eusexua is a new creation  — or because its center is too slippery for anyone to define but Twigs herself — she’s able to stretch it to mean whatever she would like. Eusexua is specific, but it’s all-encompassing. Eusexua is emotionally poignant and spiritually vast. “Eusexua” is 11 tracks and 43 minutes. Eusexua is in Twigs, eusexua is in all of us.

On “Eusexua,” Twigs offers a culmination of her immeasurable talent as a musician and visual artist: she crafts a sinuous and sensual sonic world that’s both physically moving and emotionally touching, masterfully weaving together her razor-sharp pop sensibilities with her uniquely Twigs-ian avant-garde vision.

Her conviction in her own delivery sells many of the songs. “When a girl feels good, the world goes round,” she sings on “Girl Feels Good” over a warping, stuttering synth that’s almost a carbon copy of something from Madonna’s 1998 album “Ray of Light.” This homage should come as no surprise, considering that Twigs enlisted Marius de Vries — who has collaborated with both Madonna and other clear influences on “Eusexua,” like Bjork, in the past — for production on a number of these songs. These inspirations Twigs draws from, however, never eclipse her own iron-strong artistic identity — these are FKA Twigs’ creations, no doubt about it. 

It would be a disservice to the world of “Eusexua” to only discuss the auditory aspect. Accompanying the album are four music videos: that for the title track, “Perfect Stranger,” “Striptease,” and the most visually striking, “Drums of Death,” where Twigs is placed in an uncanny 9 to 5 workday building. She doesn’t play an office siren, however, but rather an office Loch Ness monster, devouring fax machines and turning cubicles to rubble with crushing synths. Just as the vocals and beats glitch and stutter, she contorts her body and voice into something both menacing and vulnerable. Despite her corporate garb, she will not be relegated to filing paperwork — she becomes the paperwork, and also the office building, and also the CEO. “Crash the system, diva doll,” she chokes, “Serve cunt, serve violence.” 

And she does crash the system on “Eusexua,” just as she has crashed the system for much of her career — which is why the only true eyebrow-raising moment on this album sticks out plainly, the inclusion of a North West (yes, daughter of Ye West and Kim Kardashian) feature on the otherwise excellent and danceable “Childlike Things.” It’s a perplexing choice for a few reasons — firstly, North West simply adds nothing of note to the song. The content of her contribution is strange (praising Jesus in Japanese) and her delivery is mediocre at best — but when she’s up against Twigs, mediocre slips into unpleasant. It just begs the question: why, why why why, would she be Twigs’ choice for a feature on “Eusexua?”

North West is no stranger to being nepo’d into positions she really shouldn’t have — but an inclusion on an FKA Twigs album? Why would this be the aim? To give West more artistic merit, perhaps? But doesn’t Twigs have enough artistic merit herself to stay true to an uncompromising vision? I truly wager she does – which leaves us with the conclusion that this was her vision. Which, again, screams: why? Twigs has always held a certain air of counterculture in her identity as an artist. By collaborating with North West, what exactly is she saying? Well, it seems like at best, she’s saying she’s susceptible to making poor quality decisions, and at worst, she’s saying she’s susceptible to making questionable moral decisions. 

Thankfully, it’s only a small blip in the tracklist and is followed by a career-best song. On “Striptease,” Twigs’ voice acts as an instrument of its own, slipping up and down octaves over a hypnotic, simmering beat. It calls back to some of the best moments of her discography — the tense, bleeping instrumental of “Two Weeks,” the winding melody of “Sad Day,” the stutter and buildup of “Pendulum.” And yet, the whole remains greater than the sum of its parts and the references to her past work don’t stop it from sounding old. This is new, this is eusexian. 

The emotional core of “Eusexua” lies in the gorgeous and heart-wrenching “Sticky,” which culminates in a confession: “I want to forgive myself,” whisper-sings Twigs. “I want to release myself from the pain I have inside/ My body wants to be touched in the deepest and darkest places/ I want to be loved.” Yet, just as the song crests, a heavy glitch stutters and distorts the track, breaking the intimate bubble Twigs has so carefully blown over a three-minute runtime. It serves as a reminder of both Twigs’ mastery of sonic landscapes as well as the volatility of our own emotional landscapes — at one moment, vulnerable and raw, and the next, hard and unflinching.

Although the album loses a bit of steam on the last two tracks — “24hr Dog,” a vocoder-heavy ode to submission, and “Wanderlust,” an autotuned, melodic closer — “Eusexua” remains a towering achievement not just in Twigs’ catalog but in the field of contemporary art-pop. “You’ve one life to live, do it freely,” she sings to us on “Wanderlust.” After 43 minutes of an (almost) uncompromising artistic vision, it’s clear that she’s done so herself — we have no choice but to follow suit.