There’s something about Beabadoobee at Alexandra Palace that makes it feel like the ‘90s were never a decade but a mood that settled in permanently, like an old shirt that still smells like the summer you want back. “California” doesn’t so much start as it spills in, a fizzy sugar rush of guitar fuzz that hits like an instant memory. A thousand voices in the crowd throw it back at her, screaming the words not in time but in feeling. The air is thick with it—the nostalgia, the longing, the shared ache of a generation who discovered themselves through secondhand CDs and TikTok algorithms. Bea, in a fur collared short leather dress, barely has to try. She lifts a hand. The room follows.
The first few songs feel like an unspooling, each one unfastening the next. “Talk” arrives like a bad idea you go through with anyway. The guitars cut sharper live, the chorus lands harder, as if it’s being shouted across a parking lot. The band is tight, but it’s Bea who keeps everything loose—her presence is that of someone who doesn’t overthink it, who lets the music be bigger than the moment, bigger than her. She shifts between effortless and urgent, like she’s either lost in it or barely holding on, and both feel completely right.
Somewhere in the middle, a quiet kind of devastation sneaks in. “The Perfect Pair” glides in with its bossa nova swing, that deceptively light touch that makes heartbreak feel like something you can sip through a straw. The room sways in sync. There’s a softness here, a change in texture, like the edges of the night have blurred for a second. Then it’s gone, replaced by something punchier, louder, sharper. She doesn’t linger too long on anything.
She plays “10:36” like she’s exorcising something. The chugging rhythm locks in, and the crowd becomes one moving thing, a single pulse. There’s a feeling here that’s bigger than the words, bigger than the melody. Maybe it’s the way the bassline thrums in your ribs, maybe it’s the way the lights catch in her hair, maybe it’s just the way live music takes something intimate and makes it enormous.
There are moments where it feels like time is folding in on itself. Bea stands at the mic, fingers wrapped around it loosely, and “Glue Song” begins. The room changes temperature. Phones go up. Faces soften. Some people close their eyes; some people hold onto the people next to them like the song is the only thing keeping them upright. It’s not just about love, not really—it’s about the way certain songs get tied to certain moments, how they stick to the inside of your head long after the night is over.
And then it’s winding down, or at least pretending to. “See You Soon” drifts in like a memory you don’t want to wake up from yet. It doesn’t hit like a finale—it hits like an ellipsis, like something unfinished, like something waiting to happen again. Bea doesn’t do grand gestures. She steps back, gives a small wave, disappears into the dark. The lights go up. The night lingers.
Outside, the air is cold, but the feeling sticks. You don’t leave a Beabadoobee show so much as you dissolve out of it, still half-there, still carrying pieces of it with you. In the car, on the train home, in the sudden quiet of your bedroom, there’s a melody still playing in the back of your mind. It’s not over. Not really. It never is.
Words & photos – Richard Isaac
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