8/10

It feels like we have been waiting around for eons to hear her debut studio album. Having released singles such as 'Coffee', 'Disappear' and her breakthrough offering 'She Plays Bass' as far back as 2017, the slow but sudden rise of Beabadoobee has been one of the most captivating in resent years. Signed to the ever-impressive Dirty Hit label, there was only one place that she was destined to end up and that was firmly on everyone's favourite new artist list. So with the buzz still higher than ever, she drops her long-awaited debut album 'Fake It Flowers', a record that fully cements her legacy to date.

Despite having such enormous success with those earlier offerings, the artist has chosen to leave them aside from her initial album, giving us a fresh and renewed appeal to this new record. But it may also be that those older cuts just wouldn't fit amongst this rich and soaring 90s alt-rock-inspired aesthetic that seems to have crept into this new collection. From the start, Beabadoobee seems less interested in following the path of her contemporaries and instead pursues a more nostalgic and recognisable route, giving us a bright and familiar release that packs itself with bounds of energy and uplifting atmosphere, it is hard not to feel instantly drawn to it.

The album's preview singles obviously gave us an indication of what we could expect on here, but 'Fake It Flowers' is a far more adventurous and sometimes raucous full-length than we could have hoped for. Continually upping the ante on almost every track, this first LP is her new beginning and something that we can see becoming the start of a glittering career to come.