BEABADOOBEE - PYLON

review

24 Sept

Indie powerhouse Beabadoobee, more affectionately referred to as Bea, emerges stronger than ever with her fourth studio album, Pylon, released on September 18 by Dirty Hit and Interscope. Rising to prominence with her 2020 single ‘death bed (coffee for your head)’, which now serves as an anthemic relic of the COVID-19 TikTok era, Bea has always held a DIY ethos close to her heart and at the core of her work. Yet despite her transition from producing on the cold tiles of her best mate’s bedroom floor to writing in the midst of tour-induced artistic chaos, Beabadoobee does not lose her authenticity. Growing larger again without appearing larger than life, Pylon provides Bea with the perfect platform to contemplate her own experiences as an ever-growing artist. She reflects on her experiences not just as a musician but on the lifestyle so deeply intertwined with it.

Releasing Pylon ahead of her first headlining arena tour (aptly named ‘The Powerlines Tour’), she exposes the unique vulnerabilities in the life of the artist through themes of distance, social disconnection and the complexity of the modern relationship. Pylon serves as a reminder that it does not matter how many fuzzed-up guitars a musician may layer over the vocalisation of their struggles. Beneath all the noise, Pylon reinforces that it is innately human to feel at full capacity. At 26 years of age, Beabadoobee finds herself at a crossroads, veering away from the escapades of the early 20s and transitioning into a new stage of life, as the album reflects.

Yet Pylon is not just a compilation of gut-wrenchingly resonant lyrics or an extension of Bea’s prior catalogue; it is also a rather successful attempt to veer her career away from songs of the pop persuasion. She is pluckier, unabashed and in pursuit of that punk-esque sound. And what better way to explore this new musical escapade than through collaboration with the legendary likes of Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Turnstile’s Brendan Yates. Bea pays homage to her roots and to her first electric guitar—alt-rock essential, the Fender Mustang—by venturing into the world of grunge and heavier instrumentals.

Opening strongly with the album’s titular track, ‘Pylon’ blasts right into that yearning that has been heard on Beabadoobee’s previous albums. “I’d rather be nowhere with you / than somewhere without you” sets this tone rather well. ‘Pylon’ invokes a strange sort of nostalgia that cannot quite be pinpointed. Bea pairs the imperfect nature of her acoustic guitar, where one can hear the ever-so-slight ringing of strings, with sustained notes that produce a special sort of orchestral quality. ‘Pylon’ is a track that provides the listener with a valid justification to wistfully stare out of a rainy bus window, pretending to be the subject of a low-budget indie film. And why not? It is autumn after all.

The album’s leading single ‘Sun Has Set’ instantaneously packs a punch with rhythmic and raw layering that just scratches an itch one never knew was there. ‘Sun Has Set’ is not simply addressing a love lost, but addresses just how heart-wrenching the impact of modern love really is. Beabadoobee unleashes her post-breakup wrath with “Fuck that, you can never run back to me now” and “When I say ‘We’ll never be friends,’ I mean, we’ll never pretend.” Contrary to its own lyrics, there is very little left unsaid in this track (‘There’s so much we left unsaid’)—and rightly so. Bea is not shying away from uncensored emotion.

‘Memories’ is what Beabadoobee’s cult audience expects of her. It feels like being punched in the gut by sunshine and can be deemed the buoyant sister track of ‘Sun Has Set’. Where ‘Sun Has Set’ marks the impermanence of light, acting as a metaphor for love’s great warmth, in ‘Memories’ the sun’s embrace is ‘’always here’’. “Found through you that love like this is not so hard to find” reinstates hope in the listener and reminds us that humankind has a larger capacity for love than we remind ourselves of.

‘Switchblade’ slows the pace and is the track which best showcases the versatility of Beabadoobee’s vocal range. In place of her usual sprightly soprano notes, the listener is presented with a deeper, grittier, more desperate pleading. Bea admits to struggling with the strain of coming-of-age, as “Growing up just means to fuck everything up again”. In both theme and composition, this track clearly illustrates the grunge-adjacent and alt-rock influences that Pylon held close in its creation. Bea emphasises isolation and contemplates the extent of this feeling, as she questions “Can I phone a friend?”. In many ways, the song is reminiscent of that 90s scornful angst the likes of Veruca Salt projected, even potentially alluding to their career-defining hit with the lyric “Either, seether / with this anger / can’t control this fever”. All in all, ‘Switchblade’ is a solid addition to any angsty-girl-anthems playlist.

Featuring Hayley Williams, ‘Nothing to Prove’ is the album’s standout collaborative piece. Both vocalists seem effortlessly together rather than being in grandiose competition with one another, a common pitfall of many collaborative tracks. In one regard, ‘Nothing to Prove’ may be seen as Williams’ symbolic passing of the torch to the new generation. She allows her vocal melody to lie behind Beabadoobee’s. In another, it highlights both vocalists’ fine-tuned talent and magnetic lyricism. What more could one wish for?

Being the song that lends its name to the upcoming album tour, ‘Powerlines’ is the lovechild of Turnstile’s Brendan Yates (featured), Title Fight’s Shane Moran (assisted production) and, of course, Beabadoobee. Thanks to its slowed yet sludgy guitar distortion, ‘Powerlines’ could very comfortably sit on a Deftones record. It has all the elements of a strong, alt-rock track.

‘Satellite’ is the ultimate concluding track, with the song’s final minute dedicated to a pure instrumental recapitulation. This track shifts between the delicate and the heavy and is pretty representative of the album in its entirety. Its celestial references, such as ‘’I’m split in two / sing to the moon," showcase that love is larger than one’s immediate surroundings.

Pylon, totalling 14 tracks, is Beabadoobee’s most ambitious project to date. Navigating subgenre shifts at the expense of comfort is something many commercial artists fail to achieve. However, the lengthy nature of Pylon does push it to the verge of being a maybe-I-should-skip-this-track album. While there are no stark outliers, the strength of some of its tracks, by contrast, makes the other tracks seem weakened. ‘Radio’, ‘Spark’, ‘In Motion’ and ‘Despite That’ are by no means poor songs, but are non-essential in the album’s construction. Beabadoobee herself has stated it is not intended to be a concept album, but it is difficult to listen to its entirety with each song disjointed from one another.

Yet there is also the argument to be made that Pylon’s 14-song tracklist is a way in which Beabadoobee asserts her artistic independence and provides for her longstanding fans. In a trend of sorts popularised by Taylor Swift, who Bea has expressed admiration for, lengthy albums with additional tracks are albums built for the fans.

On occasion, Pylon mistakes length as a necessity, but this album’s merit lies in its crystal-clear ambition. Beabadoobee is not churning out a repeat of her repertoire; she is testing the waters and gauging just how much she can experiment whilst retaining her fan base. Overall, Pylon is an album with a significant amount more merit than it ever had room for error. Utilising hooks that grab, lyrics that resonate and a bloody brilliant backing band, Pylon stands as a testament to the fact that, with strong fundamentals, the musician will thrive. Ultimately, Pylon is an album which undoubtedly will succeed in leaving the listener feeling fulfilled, regardless of whether they have followed Beabadoobee from her humble beginnings or have made the recent discovery of her discography.