Beabadoobee’s long-awaited debut album Fake It Flowers is finally here, in all its nineties glory. Following five singles (‘Care’, ‘Sorry’, ‘Worth It’, ‘How Was Your Day?’ and ‘Together’), the full album is electric. You can stream it everywhere now. Tomorrow night (Saturday 17), fans can participate in a Twitter Listening Party – the release party of choice for the socially distanced era.
Thank you fake it flowers for existing and letting me vomit my feelings out. I’m gonna get in my pants and dance to this album in my bedroom now and I hope you do the same In case you missed her phenomenal rise to fame online, Beabadoobee is the stage name of Beatrice Laus who was born in the Philippines and raised in London, where she attended and was subsequently kicked out of a Catholic all-girls school. All of this is important because all of it finds its way into her music one way or another – for twenty years old, she is insightful about the real world. ‘
Care’ is one of the best openings to an album in a very long time – impeccably tight and bursting with just the right amount of pop, it is the grunge declaration that Beabadoobee’s fans have been waiting for. In forty minutes, Fake It Flowers then races through styles, emotions and catchy lyrics – a whistle-stop tour of Beatrice Laus’ listening habits and influences. In every interview, she name-drops a series of inspirations: Pavement (anyone who knows about her will know this), The Cranberries, Elliott Smith, Lush, Smashing Pumpkins. All of them are here.
‘Charlie Brown’ covers a difficult subject for Beabadoobee with regard to her own mental health. Followed by ‘Emo Song’ (we’ve all been there), the middle section of the album is heavy in a way that will surely really resonate with her fans and their experiences. She is well aware that despite her nineties fascination, she occupies a moment when teenagers’ lives can be complicated and messy, and you have a sense that she is relieved to be honest about this.
‘Horen Sarrison’ is the loveliest love song; it reads like a ode to being young and in love and it flitting between massive feelings and the comforting cornerstones of your day-to-day life. These are as mundane as the last bus, but I know what she means when she conjures up the last bus in her meditation on love.
‘Yoshimi. Forest. Magdalene’ evidently owes something major to The Flaming Lips, and it also contains the most relatable opening lines of 2020: “He—, hold up, fuck / He—, what the fuck? / Sounds like a fart … / He smells very nice.” While Laus covers some difficult and personal ground across the album, sometimes they are just the lyrics of what’s important to a twenty year old girl, and that matters too.
Fake It Flowers listening paaaaartttyyyy Saturday night. Follow #FAKEITFLOWERS and press play at 7pm UK. pic.twitter.com/Ltp4OMPCJz
— beabadoobee (@beabad00bee) October 15, 2020
From her rise to fame on Tiktok, with ‘death bed (coffee for your head)’, those who were just keeping half an eye out for what she was up to might not have registered the depth of her grunge sensibility. Fake It Flowers is a fully-fledged, layered, clashing album of wall-of-sound guitar followed by slow, personal acoustic moments. Beabadoobee knows her stuff about the nineties. When asked by The Independent what she used her first professional pay check from her record label to buy, she told them, “a Francoise Hardy single on vinyl from Rough Trade and a cardigan”.
