Earlier this year, the white alt-R&B artist Tom Krell told Pitchfork, “The music I want to make is somehow slightly more holy than” the “crass,” libidinous R&B of the mainstream (Miguel is his example). Instead of telling, the unapologetically crass twigs shows: “Closer” has the sway and echo of a hymn.

For a few years now, dance music has maintained a ubiquity not experienced since the ’70s disco boom. All the while I have longed for a slower response to this utilitarian musical ideal, an artist who’s willing to penetrate the slow jam and infect it with genuine oddness without losing any of its sex or soul. Twigs does this astonishingly well. She is consistently idiosyncratic without seeming consciously obtuse. She grounds herself in the earthly pleasures of flesh, while transcending trappings of genre and gender.

I haven’t heard a debut album that I loved so much in years, and I haven’t been this obsessed with an album, period, in years. LP1 makes me feel like I’m in college again. This is sex, this is love, and this is so good that it’s way too easy to confuse one for the other.

From @richjuzwiak, on FKA Twigs