Beatopia, beabadaoobee (6/10)

Okay I will be honest. I've tried to listen to beabadoobee before and, while I've liked a few of the songs, I've generally found her sound to be too poppy for my taste. I had never listened to a full album, though, so I thought this (pretty hyped up) release was a great opportunity to give her a chance. While I'm still not the biggest fan, I definitely have gained respect and an appreciation for the UK singer songwriter (also I'm always biased to support Asian artists especially in the indie world). Based on her imaginary world as a child, Beatopia comes out of Bea's recent breakup and her imaginations/meditations on love and loss and individuality. The album starts off strong with a short two minute song ("Beatopia Cultsong") of her repeating, "Is it me or recently time is moving slowly" over a nice guitar riff and some noisy ambience. While I found maybe 2/3 of the album to be too poppy for me, I really actually fucked with 1/3 of it - the 1/3 that was more experimental (like that first song) or more pop rocky/punky. My favorite song on the album, "the perfect pair" is actually neither experimental or rocky, but the kind of flamenco-like guitar paired with Bea's british pure vocals is just awesome and reminded me a lot of Hope Tala. Bea as a person and artist is also just very relatable and likable which works in her favor. Oh the album also has a Pinkpantheress feature :) altho I didn't really like that song. Favorite tracks: 10:36, the perfect pair, Ripples