User:JennKR/melissa

M3LL155X (pronounced "Melissa") is the third extended play (EP) by English experimental musician FKA twigs, released on 13 August 2015 by Young Turks.

Reception

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
Billboard
Consequence of Sound	B
The Independent
NME	8/10
Pitchfork Media	8.6/10
PopMatters	9/10
Spin	8/100

Upon release, M3LL155X received widespread acclaim from critics. On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 to reviews from music critics, the album received an average score of 89, which indicates "universal acclaim", based on 12 reviews. Musicologists M3LL155X's cohesiveness and themes—notably the juxtaposition of power and sexuality—as particular highlights.

Andy Gill lauded Twigs for ensuring a "more focused, coherent application" of the music that originated on the EP's predecessor LP1. Describing her as pop music's "most dynamic and imaginative young talent", he praised her for conveying a message of empowerment and for the EP's strong, innovative visuals. Pretty Much Amazing were impressed by how M3LL155X's tracks narrate "a struggle of sexual power". Similarly praising EP's cohesion, they described it as possessing a "suicidal energy" as if it "were about to break down the instruments, the deep bass splintering wood, the high falsetto shattering glass". Pitchfork Media's Anupa Mistry found that M3LL155X is a "a high-concept, intellectually curious project that... builds on her previous work, exploring ideas of dominance and submission and drilling down almost completely into the self". She asserts that Twigs makes the strongest case for the feminist pop star, highlighting that she is concerned with "mastery" in two particular dimensions: the ownership of her work and continual acknowledgement of her influences and collaborators.

Harley Brown of Spin found the music simultaneously "nostalgic" yet "futuristic", ultimately "testing the boundaries between light and unfathomable darkness, the breathtaking and the nauseating". Consequence of Sound's Adam Kelvin saw M3LL155X born out of an identity crisis: a response that declares her artistry uncompromised in a time when she is most public due to her high-profile relationship with actor Robert Pattinson. Kelvin concludes that conflicting emotions "are the sounds of a full person, and twigs conveys that totality in a way very few artists can". NME praised the EP's tracks for feeling "like parts of a whole, musically and thematically connected in a way you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a between-albums [release]". Kris Ex of Billboard summarises that the "the music is spacious, paranoid and sultry; the lyrics are ­suggestive and knotted", calling M3LL15X a "commentary on agency", while PopMatters' Devone Jones identified that Twigs' songwriting had matured and her vocals "send chills down the spine... everything [becoming] more grand and obtuse with every song".