beabadoobee’s sophomore album, Beatopia, was named after – and conceptually built around – an imaginary world Bea Kristi invented as a child. This fantastical realm not only buoyed the follow-up to her 2020 debut Fake It Flowers, but unlocked a playful eclecticism in her sound, pushing it forward despite her retreat into childhood. Though Kristi’s third album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, is grounded in her present reality, the singer-songwriter continues to untangle mental patterns that have roots in her formative years, admitting, on the very first song, to “indulging in situations that are fabricated imaginations.” It’s a growing-up album in the truest sense of the word: Kristi takes a hard look in the mirror, accepts accountability for her mistakes, yet is no more immune from making them than anyone else. All those years later, she still has to find new ways to deal with being alone.

Whether writing songs in a hotel room, opening for Taylor Swift, or heading out to Malibu to record with Rick Rubin at his Shangri-La studio, Kristi spent much of the time making This Is How Tomorrow Moves away from the London bedroom where she first started crafting songs. Rather than masking her flaws or vulnerabilities by flattening her sound, however, Rubin’s approach allowed Kristi to lean into them. When Kristi and longtime guitarist and co-producer Jacob Bugden arrived at the studio with recorded demos, Rubin asked them to instead play through every song on acoustic guitar, stripping them back and keeping only what’s necessary – which is partly where that feeling of groundedness stems from. The album’s quieter moments are precious, from the bracing sentimentality of a piano ballad called ‘Girl Song’ to ‘Everything I Want’, a hushed love song that crystallizes Kristi’s feelings. But the restraint also benefits more dynamic rock songs like ‘Beaches’, whose melodic simplicity makes it no less thrilling; it’s about the particular mix of anxiety and hope Kristi felt at Shangri-La, and you instantly get why it’s a feeling worth chasing.

But things aren’t always so clear, and it wouldn’t be a beabadoobee record without her branching out and finding her footing. As This Is How Tomorrow Moves finds its way from heartbreak to new love, the songs’ production and arrangement shift accordingly. She waltzes away loneliness on ‘Coming Home’ and gets back into her bossa nova groove on ‘Cruel Affair’, picking up the thread from Beatopia’s ‘The Perfect Pair’. ‘Ever Seen’, which sparkles with the possibilities of a certain kind of love that can pull everything back into focus, is adorned with horns performed by CJ Camieri, colouring the song with the same wide-eyed joy that ripples through ‘Tie My Shoes’. Even if it’s rarely the subject of her songs, Kristi acknowledges the chaos that pervades her life, but relishes the comedown – being, as she puts it in ‘Man Who Left Too Soon’, “in a state of finding comfort in familiar places that I know.” It’s there that sadness reveals itself only as temporary, just a thing that comes and goes.

Kristi’s childhood self isn’t absent from This Is How Tomorrow Moves. In the damning ‘Real Man’, she admits to telling her mother what her lover did, “like a kid” – a cheeky add-on that accentuates the drama. ‘Tie My Shoes’ is all about how early trauma is responsible for the singer’s tendency toward self-infantilization. Despite working with one of the world’s most sought-after producers, some of the songs here take notes from what Krist might have written before she even had a full-length record out, let alone three. Yet even as she can’t escape the relentless pace of her life as a burgeoning star, the album drips with confidence – at times explosive, others subdued, something you almost stumble upon rather than actively work toward. “Wound up with a purpose,” she sings on ‘Ever Seen’, staring into her lover’s eyes. “I look up to the sky and think/ At least we looked at the same moon,” goes another song about the kind of grief she has yet to experience, a death in another person’s family. Some things we can’t control or even imagine, she seems to suggest, but let’s never lose sight of what’s holding us together – then, and from now onwards.