MAGDALENE
A breathtakingly fragile and defiant document of heartbreak, fusing operatic vocal heights with shattered, avant-garde electronics and stark piano.
A breathtakingly fragile and defiant document of heartbreak, fusing operatic vocal heights with shattered, avant-garde electronics and stark piano.
Masterpiece of grief
A shattered operatic high note, suspended over the wreckage of a glitching synthesizer, marked the end of the artist’s reign as an untouchable, futuristic enigma. Where her debut hid behind a mask of sleek, metallic R&B, this record exposes the raw nerve of a devastating public heartbreak. By trading her impenetrable digital armor for the stark vulnerability of a classical piano, she transformed her avant-garde pop into a sacred, bruised liturgy. You are left standing in the ruins of a sanctuary where grief and defiance fuse, witnessing a creator rebuild herself from the dust of her own myth.
The record anchors its high-tech architecture in the raw devastation of love lost, transforming a highly public breakup into a series of sacred, deeply personal elegies.
Critics warmly embraced the album as a deeply personal, adventurous exploration of physical and emotional hardship, praising its cinematic production and shift toward abstraction. Reviewers frequently noted how the songs defy easy genre classification, creating an affecting experience that feels closely tied to the artist's background in dance and visual storytelling.
“Tahliah Barnett’s been to tabloid hell and back and experienced gruelling ill-health, all of which is explored on her huge, panoramic second album”Read review
“The performer undergoes a metamorphosis after emotional and physical trauma”Read review
“On Magdalene, her long-brewing followup, she moves to the next level, making music that resists being pinned by genre — or even as merely music, so integral is choreography, filmmaking, and photography to what she does”Read review
“MAGDALENE might not be perfect, but it reverberates with the sound of someone shutting the door on a difficult chapter in their life. The prospect of what’s next for Barnett is genuinely exciting”Read review
“With limitlessly innovative songwriting and production, the cinema of twigs’ music has never been more affecting. MAGDALENE is not just on the vanguard of pop, it’s in a breathtaking class of its own”Read review
“The sequencing doesn’t always feel right – lead single Cellophane, a gorgeous breakup epic, should be at the heart of the album, not tacked at the end after natural closer Daybed. Whatever the order of the songs, though, the inner battles of Magdalene will stay with you long after they finish”Read review
“Twigs still finds ferocious power in her music, her femininity, and her sexuality. But on MAGDALENE, she tampers that ferocity with a radical sensitivity and vulnerability that indicate a broader maturation in her artistic development”Read review
“The follow-up to 2014’s LP1, made in the wake of heartbreak, is twigs at her sorrowful, scrappy best”Read review
“The sound of someone delicately yet decisively knitting themselves back together”Read review
“Tahliah Barnett moves further into abstraction on this personal, painstaking and wildly adventurous record”Read review
“MAGDALENE is the sound of an artist gluing together the million tiny shards in which she found herself after an explosive breakup”Read review
“Like the dancer she is, Barnett pushes through pain in pursuit of beauty and truth, and the leaps she makes are breathtaking”Read review
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