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.
Laus performs under the name beabadoobee. Her third record, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, is an astute collection of 2000s indie rock and folksy ballads that combines the influences of her first two LPs. Known for mining 2000s radio, Laus has also become a fashion icon who embodies aughts nostalgia.
A Pitchfork profile describes Laus’ vintage shopping in Brooklyn, where she picks out a skirt she will wear on stage that night. Her music carries this mix of casualness and intentionality. A diverse sonic palette lifts Laus’ austere melodies, reaching across a void to listeners. Her willingness to experiment shows persistence in bridging this gap.
On Talkhouse Podcast, Laus said her songs come together as melodies first. She fits lyrics onto these compositions that “sound good”- they don’t have to work grammatically. In “Cruel Affair”, beabadoobee summarizes criticism for this aspect of her music: “They all say, ‘How could something so uncomplicated still fill her brain?'”
The emotional intelligence of beabadoobee’s music comes from an ability to pair sound and melody, and then situate that combination in the landscape of an album. The lyrical thread of This Is How Tomorrow Moves, which discusses romantic trials, the bliss of new love, and self-consciousness, is a framing device for a story of redemption.
In “Take a Bite”, beabadoobee has fun with 2000s rock, letting electric guitar flourishes mask her reflectiveness. The harshness of the guitar enhances her emotive delivery, and her delicate vocal compresses the anger of the production, trimming it into a digestible portion.
Laus told Elle magazine the record’s title refers to life’s repetitiveness: “You’re always going to come out on the other end, and then something’s going to hit you.” The closing track, “This Is How It Went”, resolves to move forward. Although writing songs is an exercise in distilling life into art, that process also produces relatable feelings that can become material for more art. “You make a movie, and I’ll just keep writing my songs,” Laus concludes.
The progression of notes in the melody of “How It Went” matches its piano riff, a pairing that risks coming across as elementary. In a pop song, such simplicity is bastardized for mass consumption. However, Laus’ indie roots protect her from this categorization. In her hands, an accessible melody becomes a serene moment where the necessity of contemplation is the subject.
Similarly, “Girl Song” touches on an overwrought topic: self-image. While body image and self-consciousness are important subjects, especially when standards of beauty disproportionately affect young women, discussing them has become a path of relevancy for unoriginal work.
However, the unadorned piano backing of “Girl Song” brings freshness to an exploration of familiar territory, reflecting the desire of a narrator who wishes to live without the need to change: “Just a girl who overthinks… the creases on her face.” Beabadoobee is a sonic chameleon, able to alternate between sounds. This flexibility defines her persona and makes it mysterious: the ability to change is her central characteristic.
Laus told The Guardian that opening for Taylor Swift inspired her to write distinct bridge sections in songs. Consequently, every track on This Is How Tomorrow Moves thoroughly investigates its central concept. Aside from adding lyrical reflection, bridges allow room for beabadoobee’s sonic experimentation to turn in on itself, causing the music to further the narrative of a song.
beabadoobee alters the tempo of “One Time” in the bridge, giving a laconic rock ballad a lackadaisical edge. The rhythmic chant furthers her stance as a musician unchained from genre; making a drastic change in the middle of a song keeps the listener guessing. She supports the seriousness of her mission by undermining the seriousness of her persona.
Laus also succeeds in shorter formats. In 2020’s “Glue Song”, the haunting melody resembles Lana Del Rey‘s “Video Games”, where straightforward pacing underscores the narrator’s inability to overcome sadness. In “Glue Song”, this helplessness reads as contentment. When opportune, beabadoobee avoids heavy production, reminding listeners her power doesn’t lie in confession but in an ability to emote that holds equal gravity.
On This Is How Tomorrow Moves, Laus worked with longtime collaborator Jacob Budgden and, for the first time, Rick Rubin, whose credits include Adele and Lady Gaga. Rubin encouraged Laus to familiarize herself with acoustic versions of her songs before production, which forced her to see the strength of her compositions. “‘Oh shit, this is actually a really good song!'” she said.
“Beaches” encapsulates the influences that color Tomorrow. A turning point three-quarters through the tracklist, the song describes working in Rubin’s Los Angeles studio, which offered a calm environment, a contrast to Laus’ hometown: “When I make a record in London, I’m going out and partying,” she said. “Beaches” describes the clarity inspired by Ruben’s minimalist decorations: “Walls painted white tell me the secrets.”
“Beaches” combines the prominent guitar riffs of Tomorrow’s first half with the serenity of the second. The song is a story of contemplation, as the narrator realizes a choice set a permanent change in motion. Within the album’s narrative, the song plays a similar role as beabadoobee reprises rock influences.
The rest of the record exists in the shadow of this moment, which works to its advantage. “This Is How It Went” is a gentle lullaby that reflects on the creative process. By following an angsty moment, its reconciliation points to the passage of time as a cause of its catharsis. The final song on a record does not exist in a vacuum. “Beaches” expresses the danger of dwelling on the past: “Don’t wait for the tide just to keep both your feet in.” A sense of timelessness can be helpful in making art, but reality must resume.
“Girl Song” casts Tomorrow as a struggle to be heard on your own terms while transcending the struggles people assign to you. If engaging with universality is a strategy that warrants criticism, how can an outsider enter a broader conversation? By confronting a shared battle, “Girl Song” is a ticket to the solitude beabadoobee craves.
Beabadoobee said performing for the massive crowds of Swift’s Eras Tour was “terrifying”. Laus’ songs are quiet contemplations; inflating them on a large scale takes away their most appealing quality.
As long as it embraces its own nature, a song does its job. In 2019, Swft told Elle magazine songwriting is like “putting a picture frame around a feeling”. beabadoobee’s songs are time capsules. “Days blend to one when I’m on the right beaches,” she says on “Beaches”.
Chaos makes the wheels of time turn, even if order exists in continuity, as reflected in Tomorrow’s linear progression of emotions. The ability to investigate these feelings without pausing a story is vital to telling one.
Beabadoobee is unconcerned with the machinations of storytelling itself. Emotions manifest through her music, and lyrics, like guardrails, provide a frame of reference. Similarly, while picking out clothes in Brooklyn as part of a Pitchfork interview, beabadoobee displayed the importance of knowing something good when you see it. Some feelings are instinctive, and this impulsiveness speaks for itself.
For this reason, at times, writing music reviews feels futile. There is no way to engage with the material being reviewed in its own medium. I am using words to describe sound. It’s like trying to hold water in your hands; something always slips through the cracks. The best I can do is pick words that amount to more than the sum of their parts and hope a reader might know what I mean. I have begun to criticize myself. This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a superb album, so while reviewing it, I am finding I have less and less to say.
I’ll add one more thing. By displaying an ambivalence to negotiate with the world around her, beabadoobee achieves timelessness. Such ambiguity is the point of art. It exists for its own sake: a testament to humanity itself, which, as a species, perceives meaning in the world, even though its ability to do so will one day expire.
While individual creations say something specific about the human condition, art itself is a reflection of that condition. Art conveys an emotion, but that emotion doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It must be allowed to exist in a certain context to be understood. Critics attempt to analyze that context. A fair criticism evaluates how well a body of work does what it tries to do.
The difference between criticism and art is that art is timeless, and criticism relies on its place in a certain time. It interprets how art reflects its circumstances. This is why criticism is fulfilling: there is always something new to say. I enjoy interpreting the context in which I exist. Maybe there is something artistic about that.