Getting Twiggy With It – Interview with FKA Twigs

You’re slightly anxious waiting to interview Tahlia Barnett, aka 26-year-old future-pop sensation FKA Twigs. Her r’n'b-influenced electronica is gorgeous and strident but, with its twisting tempos and kinky lyrics, darkly bonkers too.

Creepier yet are her videos – in the promo to ‘Two Weeks’ she drips milk from her fingers and drifts in amniotic fluid. This is through-the-looking glass stuff, sublime bleeding into spooky.
None of which has detained Barnett on her march to the top. Just out, debut album LP1 – the minimalist title a reflection of the tunes within – has become a cause celebre amongst taste-makers, and will pleasantly surprise anyone inclined to give up on contemporary chart music as feckless and brainlessly hedonistic.
She has breached the top ten in the UK; at the recent Electric Picnic festival in Stradbally, Barnett’s slot was among the weekend’s most anticipated (crushingly she lost her voice and had to cancel). Her songs may sound like Beyoncé, Aphex Twin and Steve Reich wedged in a blender, then shot into deep space – but, goodness, the lady has arrived.
“There was a lot of struggle making the record,” says Barnett. “I have inner belief, though not always at the same level. It varies from 70 to 100 per cent. The ‘inner’ confidence is always there. Sometimes the ‘outer’ confidence can be down to 20 per cent. The external wear and tear is occasionally difficult to overcome.”
She’s had a fiery baptism since popping up on January’s ‘big-for-2014’ crib-sheets and, truthfully, the hype has fried her circuits a little. Barnett is grateful for the exposure. Still, at moments she wonders what she’s let herself in for.
“Day to day life hasn’t changed,” she says. “I’m having fun. At the same time, it is a bit overwhelming. A lot is happening at once."
It annoys her that some have attempted to diagnose a distinction between “FKA Twigs” and “Tahlia Barnett”. Indeed, she recently felt it necessary to issue a tweet to the effect that “Twigs” is not a character, it is a stage name. She isn’t pretending to be an alien or a fembot or a visitor from the far future. The person you see up on stage – it’s still her, still Tahlia.
“People are over intellectualising it,” she says. “We are all multifaceted. That’s what makes us different from animals. I’ll be singing and you can see one side of me – amazingly confident. Then, between songs, I’ll be quiet and giggly. That’s me too. After the show, I hear things like ‘oh you should stay in character as Twigs all the way’. And I’m like: ‘there’s no character, it’s all me'.
“It’s funny – I feel I’m a confident person,” she continues. “And yet, for example, I hate having my picture taken. Fans ask for pictures and, in every single one, I pull the same pose: I have this goofy grin and I’m making the peace sign with two fingers. I look like a tourist in front of the Eiffel Tower. I hate it. I can’t even take a selfie.”
Enigmatic, tempestuous, ethereal... Barnett’s music is outsider pop from a literal outsider. The daughter of a Jamaican father and an English mother, Twigs grew up mixed raced in one of Britain’s whitest cities, Gloucester, in the south west of England.
“You’re a white Irish guy. Imagine how it would feel going to school in Nigeria. London is multi-cultural, Birmingham is multi-cultural, Manchester is multi-cultural. Gloucester was not multi-cultural. You’re going to be self conscious – your hair is a little ‘wayward’, you have big eyes, big lips... everyone is staring at you. You’re like a little creature everyone’s gawping at. I remember in primary school someone not wanting to hold my hand in case the colour came off.”
She says this fondly rather than with anger. It’s clear she harbours no ill-will towards the place of her upbringing. If nothing else, it was where she learned to dance – a talent she could fall back on in London, trying to crack the music industry.
“I went to London and worked loads of jobs to support myself. I was in Selfridges and [trendy super-pub ] Tiger Tiger – and I danced. It was crazy.”
She is dismissive of her career as a hoofer, but she did overachieve, appearing in videos for, among others, Ed Sheeran, Kylie Minogue and Taio Cruz. If you are so inclined you can see her mugging for all she is worth alongside Jessie J in the promos to ‘Do It Like A Dude’ and ‘Price Tag’.
“I didn’t want to be a dancer. I never expected I would do that well. The money is, in fact, quite bad in dancing. I only did it because it paid better than retail – in other words, better than the minimum wage.”
She gets a bit irritated if people – mostly journalists – describe her as a “r’n'b” artist. Yes, of course, she is influenced by r’n'b. She grew up immersed in the same chart sounds as the rest of us; inevitably commercial pop was going to inform her. However, she feels that those who pigeonhole her in the urban genre do so because of her skin colour, not the music.
“It’s lazy journalism,” she says. “They go... 'well, she looks this way, she’s from where trip-hop was made. It’s an r’n'b / trip-hop thing’. Actually, no. I’m a producer of my own music. It has r‘n'b aspects – but there are also gospel chords and I listened to a lot of German electronica as a youngster. I’m really into Kraftwerk. And all those years absorbing punk has left a mark. If you think r’n b... you simply aren’t listening properly.”
Though she's a producer as well as a writer and singer, for LP1 her label hooked Barnett up with several studio heavy-hitters, including Paul Epworth, the golden-touch song-doctor who has midwifed smashes by Adele, Florence Welch and others.
“Paul’s the sweetest guy. I wasn’t intimidated. Why would I be? It’s my record – if I don’t like something, it’s not going on the song. I do what I want to do. It’s that straightforward.”
The name ‘Twigs’ comes from a tendency her joints have to crack and pop; Barnett affixed ‘Formerly Known As’ after it emerged another artist had a potential claim on the stage name. It’s an intriguing moniker, yet, in truth, doesn’t tell you very much about her music. Might it not have been easier to have simply gone as Tahlia? You imagine this being a topic of intense conversation at her label, Young Turks.
“My relationship with the label is simple: I look after the creative side, they help with everything else. In the studio I did have some attempts at [outsiders] offering advice. My response was: ‘this song is done’. And they’re like, ‘okay’. Creatively, it is not a collaborative process. If I say a track is finished, it’s finished.”

LP1 is out now.