On the latest single from the upcoming studio album, FKA Twigs expands the universe of Eusexua toward pure pop territory. Perfect Stranger is a mid-tempo slow burner, a bad romance in rubber that whispered breathlessly by Twigs, or cooed like a sticky lullaby. “I’d rather know nothing than all the lies,” she confesses, preferring the excitement of the unknown.
Perfect Stranger shares the expansiveness of Eusexua’s eponymous lead single, with Twigs once again drawing from club music. A rapturous breakbeat that pulls from UK garage while simultaneously dousing it in honey plays out beneath Twigs’ hushed vocals.
Unlike its predecessor, though, Perfect Stranger is committed to the pop formula – there’s no big swings, or big twists, anywhere to be found here. It’s the most pop she’s sounded since her radio-friendly turn on Caprisongs, and Twigs very much plays the part.
On the track’s accompanying music video, various vignettes depicting the lives of everyday people and some surreal fetish fantasies are staged in an open faced apartment block. It heightens the dangerous eroticsim of Twigs’ object of affection – something or someone painfully enticing, yet completely unknown.
