I took some tweens to Urban Outfitters the other day. For them the array of flowery skirts, faded band T-shirts and bucket hats was a cornucopia of fresh wonders, while for me, it was as if I’d stepped through a portal back to the Nineties — that bittersweet feeling of time standing still that a lot of us must get in 2020.
The experience of listening to Beatrice Laus’s debut album is similar. The Filipino-born, London-raised songwriter is just 20, got her first guitar at 17, and grabs at the pre-Britpop signifiers of Nineties indie rock — fuzzy guitar strumming, soft, blurred vocals and the occasional leap into messy volume — with the fervency of someone for whom the sound is still exhilaratingly new.
Her taste is impeccable. On the catchiest song, Worth It, the mix of energetic riffing and her sweet, fragile singing voice recall key women in early Nineties alternative music such as Tanya Donnelly of Belly. Her adoption of a despairing howl on Charlie Brown might come as a shock to those who only know her from her early acoustic sketch Coffee, the sampled chorus of Canadian rapper Powfu’s hit Death Bed.
She comes back to her early bedroom pop sound here on the ghostly How Was Your Day? However, elsewhere the guitars are turned up and she sounds powerful and confident, striding forwards deeper into the past.
To celebrate the album’s release, this evening Beabadoobee will be playing a full band live performance of the album on Youtube. The show will be broadcast at 8:30pm UK time, tune in at youtube.com/beabadoobee
