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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Gemma Samways

Beabadoobee at Somerset House review: sugary spins on Nineties grunge

This year is shaping up to be something of a rollercoaster for Beatrice “Beabadoobee” Laus. Peaks have included scoring a viral hit with February’s single Glue Song and spending much of March and April touring the US as the opening act on Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.

On the flipside, the Filipino-English singer-songwriter was recently forced to cancel an EU tour due to lingering illness. And then there’s the ongoing controversies at Bea’s record label, Dirty Hit, where label-mate Rina Sawayama is publicly feuding with Matty Healy of The 1975 over culturally insensitive comments made on a podcast.

If any of this drama is weighing on Bea, there were no visible signs at Somerset House, where the 23-year-old was headlining as part of the annual Summer Series. Quietly nonchalant behind a Kermit-green Telecaster, she and her three-piece band strode onstage and ripped through the barbed guitar-pop of Talk from last year’s acclaimed LP Beatopia, before launching straight into 2019’s Apple Cider.

Concision was the watchword throughout, with Bea and her band packing in an impressive 18 songs in just under an hour. Between-song interaction was kept to a minimum too, beyond air kisses and regular declarations of love for her fans. That affection was reciprocated and then some by the youthful, largely female audience, who shrieked wildly during guitar solos and bellowed back every lyric.

On the strength of performances like this, it’s not difficult to see why Bea continues to strike such a chord with Gen Z. Putting a TikTok-friendly twist on Nineties grunge, she proved her guitar hero credentials during Charlie Brown and Care from 2020 debut Fake It Flowers, which balanced sugary vocals with thrillingly serrated guitar distortion. She Plays Bass saw Bea dueling with her bassist during the middle eight, and was briefly reprised at the end to allow the audience to mosh en masse.

Interestingly, the set’s gentler moments were arguably stronger, serving to reinforce Bea’s bedroom-pop roots. The acoustic tropicalia of The Perfect Pair proved especially gorgeous, as did Glue Song’s string-embellished, lullaby-like sweetness, which was cheekily dedicated to “that one sexy motherf**ker out there.”

Stepping out on stage alone at the start of the encore, Bea delivered a dreamy acoustic one-two of forthcoming single The Way Things Go and breakout hit Coffee – as sampled on Powfu’s 2020-smash Death Bed (Coffee For Your Head). Though not due to be released for another week, the breezy guitar-pop of the former elicited a word-perfect singalong.

It all augurs extremely well for album number three – which is reportedly “in the works” – and by extension the rest of the year. Because, after a bumpy few months, there’s no denying that last night Bea got 2023 back on course.

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