Beatrice “beabadoobee” Laus provides strong backup for the common argument that, particularly in the mainstream, genre is no longer particularly important. From the outset, she has consistently dissolved the mainstream/indie binary, and pulled from a grab-bag of big time and obscure influences across decades while maintaining a distinct songwriting personality of her own.
In this regard she resembles The 1975 (whose label she is signed to, and who have previously lent songwriting and production to her work) and Taylor Swift (who she has supported on tour), although one might argue that she’s subtler and more elegant in her patchwork than either.
She does not, however, provide any backup at all for the equally common argument that the album is dead for post-streaming generations. Both her previous LPs have been fantastically structured and proved enduringly popular as bodies of work with her fans – and this one seems even more complete. It goes in hard with pop-indie bangers "Take a Bite" and "California" that manage to be very 2020s while fizzing with energy gleaned from Nirvana and Beck, The Breeders and Blondie, but as the first half progresses it steadily breathes slower and deeper, gets more introspective and a whole lot more Seventies.
“Tie my Shoes” is blissful – it does sound modern, but it’s got a streak of The Eagles’ “Desperado” running through it, and definitely has a sense of the Californian beach life that Laus and long-time bandmate and co-writer Jacob Bugden enjoyed while recording with studio Yoda Rick Rubin. But it’s “Girl Song” that feels like it really cuts loose and provides a centrepiece for the album. It’s a piano ballad that hints at Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Carole King, The Carpenters, even Barry Manilow, but once again pulls all this together without the joins showing, and entirely natural in Laus’s own voice.
It feels like Laus and Budgen arriving at a whole new level of maturity of songwriting – even like they’re joining the lineage of those aforementioned names. The whole album, really, feels like a maturing and a consolidation, and it’s pretty lovely. It’s not a complete slam dunk: “A Cruel Affair,” for example, is an attempt to revisit the bossa nova tinted mode she so successfully hit with 2022’s “the perfect pair” but doesn’t have the lightness of touch that allowed that song to get fully airborne, and “Everseen” is an over-sugared indie bop. But overall this is the sound of a major artist well and truly settling in for the long haul.
Listen to "Take a Bite":
