Beabadoobee – This Is How Tomorrow Moves
This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a sentimental and self-aware album that's emotive and infectiously catchy at times, while a little too safe at others
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. However, Bea’s sound has come a long way since her first EPs – Lice and Patched Up – which were almost entirely acoustic affairs.
Distancing herself from the rougher instrumentation found in her 2020 album, Fake It Flowers, Bea borrows from country music in both instrumental style and vocal inflection. Ever Seen and Everything I Want embody this direction wholeheartedly. The former track leans, arguably too far, into the brand of inoffensive country-pop that Taylor Swift has built an empire upon. The latter, however, pulls away from Swiftian influence and moves in a distinctly Britpop direction akin to that of Corinne Bailey Ray’s Put Your Records On. This is where the LP is at its best.
This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a sentimental and self-aware album that, at times, is emotive and infectiously catchy. At others, it is a little too safe, a little too generic and reserved. This is How Tomorrow Moves’ biggest misstep is not its exploration of country as a genre, but rather its hesitancy to consistently use it in a unique way.
Listen to: Take a Bite, Everything I want, Beaches