As FKA Twigs prepares us for the Eusexua Afterglow—a.k.a. the title of not her deluxe version of Eusexua, but a “sequel album” to it—she’s given the gift of “Cheap Hotel,” the first single from said record. Co-produced by Twigs, Joy Henson, Manni Dee, Petra Levitt and Lilbubblegum, the sound of the track has all the hallmarks of the early 2010s, particularly in terms of FKA Twigs’ Grimes-esque vocals. We’re talking Visions-era Grimes (in other words, well before Elon destroyed her). Then there is the element of the Spring Breakers Soundtrack to the sound, not just musically, but also with the contribution of warped-sounding male vocals that boast, “Lord on my denim, designer work wear/No pausing with these senses, I’m just tryna splurge here” (and yes, it’s also very 2010s not to mention additional vocals as an official feature [see also: Flo Rida’s “Right Round” [granted, a single from 2009], which didn’t list Kesha as the featured artist at the time when it came out).
To capture the trippy, gritty feeling of the track, Twigs once again tapped Jordan Hemingway (who also happens to her boyfriend) to direct the video (indeed, they co-directed and co-wrote it together). And, although the song itself is three minutes and thirty-one seconds, the video is practically a short film length, clocking in at seven minutes and six seconds. Opening with a few shots of the “cheap motel” in question, Hemingway then cuts to a scene of a man walking on the side of the highway as he tries to call Twigs’ phone, leaving a message demanding, “Yo, where you at yo? For real. You got me out here in the middle of nowhere, I don’t know where I’m at… This is gettin’ crazy now, come on, like…” Meanwhile, Twigs and a friend of hers roll up to the Royal Motel, likely the one in oh so glamorous Secaucus, New Jersey (though, admittedly, the aesthetic of the town has some decided “LA vibes”—this being perhaps a testament to how all the U.S. looks like a giant freeway with some strip malls plopped down here and there).
As Twigs’ friend talks about how “he wasn’t even that cute,” the viewer can infer she’s alluding to the lost dude attempting to track Twigs down in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. New Jersey). Clearly trying to continue the party/club they were at in the light of day, Twigs and her friend rock-paper-scissor for who has to go in and buy a room “for the night” (though it’s day) with the presumably kifed wallet containing the necessary credit card to do so. Though Twigs’ friend says before going, “I bet you that motherfucker’s card declined.” Fortunately for Twigs and the many other people she invites into the room, that doesn’t turn out to be the case. And from there, the title card, in all its purplish cursive font glory, establishes “Cheap Hotel” as the name of this “little movie.” One that very much possesses the style of Sean Baker—with the narrative and setting itself being almost like a mash-up of Tangerine and The Florida Project.
Once inside the room, it doesn’t take long for a flood of people to show up and keep the party going from the night/morning that has now turned into broad daylight. But Twigs clearly wants to have her own after-after-after-after party as she sings, “Do you wanna bring a friend?/To the cheap hotel right behind the club/In Room 20 or 24/Call me when you’re outside, endless summertime/At the mini bar, bring your credit card/We’ll go all night.” And all day.
Bopping along to the music she’s put on in their cheap hotel room (even though the average price at the Royal Motel is about a hundred and fifty dollars a night—so yeah, it’s a “cheap” motel by 2025 standards), Twigs ignores the various missed calls and text messages from “Hot Guy 3″ (as she’s chosen to label him in her contacts). Having way too much fun/generally too blissed out on drugs and alcohol to care, Twigs keeps dancing while various yellow-toned captions, designed to serve as “thought bubbles,” as it were, let the viewer know what each “guest” is saying. For example, “Has anyone seen my vape?”
Twigs occasionally checks her phone to listen to the latest message from Hot Guy 3 demanding to know where she is (and also where his “shit” is, for that matter—which plausibly means his wallet). In another instance, Twigs pauses the music to go outside and get a drink from the vending machine, at which time she encounters a very Tangerine-esque character that gets immediately uppity at the sight of her, asking, “The fuck you doin’ in my hood, babe?” Twigs ignores the question, continuing to go about her business before sauntering back into the room (though she does briefly threaten to spray her drink in the antagonizer’s face, prompting the latter to unleash another invective).
Back inside the room, which seems even more like another world trapped in the nighttime/some alternate universe now that we’ve seen Twigs go back into the day for a hot minute, she turns her music back on. Then, Hemingway intercuts scenes of her outside with the crew that was antagonizing her with scenes of her inside the room. This before Hot Guy 3 finally does arrive at the place, thinking that maybe he’s at last found the light at the end of the tunnel. But no, not only does everyone inside the room freeze so that they can be extra quiet and make him believe no one’s in there, but when he does open the door, he finds something quite unexpected. And this is where the unforeseen David Lynch-meets-David Cronenberg influence comes in (even though, up until this point, it was all Baker), with Twigs putting someone else’s eyeball on her face just as he enters the room. For it seems as though she’s “absorbed” everyone into her own body, become like a composite of all the revelers.
In a sense, this “absorption” vaguely achieves something she had said in one of the captions just before Hot Guy 3 burst in: “I wish I could be every me at once.” Perhaps that’s part of why she’s sought to combine Eusexua with Eusexua Afterglow as “companion pieces,” for they’re inevitably variations on the same theme. And whereas her videos for the Eusexua era all ended with, “Eusexua is a practice, Eusexua is a state of being, Eusexua is the pinnacle of human experience,” the ones for Eusexua Afterglow now just end simply with the question, “Searching for an afterglow?” And whether you were or not, it’s surely been found in “Cheap Hotel.”
Genna Rivieccio
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