Album review: beabadoobee – This Is How Tomorrow Moves

beabadoobee played the biggest shows of her young career last year as the opening act on U.S. dates of Taylor Swift’s mammoth Eras Tour. It’s remarkable how the Filipino-British singer-songwriter’s own discography has broken up into its own distinct eras: each record capturing a distinct subsection of young adulthood. Where 2020 debut Fake It Flowers felt like a tentative expansion of the adolescent bedroom sounds with which she first broke through, and 2022 follow-up Beatopia was a more shapeshifting attempt to shake existing preconceptions, third album This Is How Tomorrow Moves arrives with the confidence and sublimated calm of an artist who’s really found their groove.

Working with legendary producer Rick Rubin (Slayer, Slipknot, Johnny Cash, Christina Aguilera, Adele, Beastie Boys…) this time out, there is greater maturity in every note. Bea’s trademark indie-folk stylings haven’t been left behind. If anything, they eclipse her grungier tendencies this time out. But on songs like the outstanding Ever Seen and Tie My Shoes there’s less lo-fi fragility and more a strident, sunbeaten warmth akin to peak Phoebe Bridgers or even latter-day Tay Tay herself.

When she does crank the volume, it’s with an aching refinement. Beaches, for instance, is a timeless ode to the experience of being a globe-straddling Brit with toes in the sand of California, while seductively ’90s-tinged lead single Take A Bite already feels like a cast-iron classic.

Development is driven, Bea explains, by the journey into womanhood. “I’m more aware of my actions in these songs,” she says, “In my previous records, I would consistently sing about my reaction towards other people's doings, like a blame game. But in this record, it's accepting that there's an inevitability of my fault in there too.”

Yet there’s also an awareness that she has the potential to be a bona fide megastar. Like how the delicately glassy surface of the piano-driven Girl Song hides the bones of a song that’ll stand for decades. Or that although heart-tugging closer This Is How It Went is built on pure sentimentality, the poignance of times past are is only amplified by the promise of an unlimited future.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Phoebe Bridgers, Zeph, Paramore

This Is How Tomorrow Moves is out on August 9 via Dirty Hit