Playing her biggest British show to date, Baby Queen signalled her lofty pop-star ambitions by treating the half-full Electric Ballroom like it was a sold-out Wembley Arena. The alter ego of 24-year-old Arabella Latham, a South African who has called London home for the last six years, this pig-tailed punkette has generated considerable media buzz with her deceptively sweet pop-grunge songs about crushing heartbreak, sexual confusion, depression and drug abuse. Backed by a trio of male musicians, Baby Queen played the role of emotionally volatile hot mess. But Latham herself remained focussed and determined throughout, delivering a high-voltage performance and pressing all the right empathy buttons to connect with her young, mostly female audience.
Latham cites Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga as key musical role models, but her songs are more raucous and risqué than either, with more swearing and more drug references. Hedonistic excess may be a tired rock cliché but Latham’s lyrics approach this terrain from a more thoughtful angle, often drawing a link between drug use, low self-esteem and fragile mental health. Two early examples in this show were Raw Thoughts, a confessional chronicle of chemical delirium wrapped in candy-floss harmonies, and the self-explanatory These Drugs, which built from a brooding comedown hangover into a thunderous, clanging, muscular show-stopper.
