Release Date: Aug 9, 2024
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Dirty Hit
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Construction on Beatopia is finally finished. Prior to 2022's Beatopia, beabadoobee's career was perched squarely upon the shoulders of 90s rock nostalgia. And she certainly wasn't subtle about this fact: the heavy grunge influence, the willfully ironic and self-aware lyrics, the fact that one of her songs is literally titled "I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus"... all the elements were there, clear as day.
By exploring whatever musical direction takes her fancy, from Pavement-inspired quirkiness to big piano ballads and bossa-nova, Beatrice Laus has made her best album yet It comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that Beatrice Laus, aka Beabadoobee, is still just 24 years old. She’s already on her third album, and now she’s working with music industry legends like Rick Rubin, who takes the production helm together with Laus’ long-term collaborator Jacob Bugden, for This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Rubin actually makes the perfect foil for Laus’ music.
Look ahead on the standpoint of 2017's "Coffee", her first guitar song, and you'll notice how far away from it she is now, standing on the beachside in Malibu, much happier and more confident in herself. It's where she worked on the new record with veteran alt-rock savant Rick Rubin, a dream-come-true collaboration. Despite leaving her comfort zone - London, that is - retrospection still stands firm as her greatest inspiration.
Beadadoobee's This Is How Tomorrow Moves feels like a rumination on her past, focusing on past mistakes, experiences, and relationships in a coming-of-age LP. One Time reflects on a long past relationship that occasionally rises to the surface of Bea's consciousness, throwing her back into the struggles of a dysfunctional relationship. Thematically, this has always been her bread and butter and it continues to be so.
Beatrice Laus once felt like an outsider. Her second album, 2022’s Beatopia, took its name from an imaginary world Laus conceived as a child to take solace from life at school. “I felt like an alien,” she said of attending a majority white school in London, where she experienced racism, after immigrating there from the Philippines with her parents at age three.
At first, Beabadoobee's playful innocence was her trump card. Uploading songs to the internet as a teen, there was a refreshing lack of pose - everything was open, and her feelings were blissfully unfiltered. Even now, though, as she reaches her third album, the template hasn't really changed, so much as it's been finessed - 'This Is How Tomorrow Moves' has a certain maturity to it, but it all feels natural, and unforced.
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