Beabadoobee’s collaborative Sept. 18 release, Pylon, confronts the sources of tension within personal, visceral experiences through volatile ’90s and 2000s rock replications.
This 14-track emo album is Beabadoobee’s fourth and follows her first U.K. No. 1 album, 2024’s This Is How Tomorrow Moves. According to Complex, this project helped her get out everything she wished she’d said to someone while channelling the hardcore and Midwest emo she admires.
Titular track “Pylon” opens this angsty album with distant laughter, and mellow harp lines welcome Beabadoobee’s tension-free, gliding vocals into the serene mix.
Pylon refers to steel electricity towers the singer kept passing on tour, which reminded her of her loved ones at home during an isolating time. Lines like “you’re always worth the wait” and “every mile just brings you near” convey that yearning and an anticipation of togetherness.
This song is a genre icebreaker that preps the listener for what they might hear later. The instrumentals foreshadow the rock to come with amp sounds and deep string riffs, while bright banjo moments come in and out.
“Sun Has Set” feels like the true intro, launching the album into edgy rock territory, showcasing a strong guitar melody line, infectious percussion, and stylistically simple lyrics that artfully say the same thing a million ways.
Beabadoobee’s voice feels soft for the genre, but her enunciation and punchiness make it fit and add to the track’s early Paramore-like sound.
The previous song’s intense rock takes a more subdued role in “Estranged,” an acoustic indie track with traces of electric guitar.
The main guitar melody bops around it, giving the song a pop-rock, danceable sound.
A moment of distant, radio-static filtering on the song’s bridge was its standout feature and gave its final moments an extra kick.
“Switchblade” expands on that extra kick with brutality and erratic musicality. Combined, the electric guitar distortion, crisp and biting rhythmic percussion, and bassline sound clean yet heavy.
Beabadoobee’s cadence is nearly immaculate and carries an overall palpable tension. She adopts a nasal-forward sound for lines like “growing up just means to fuck everything up again” and shows delicate viciousness with intense words like “seether.”
The album takes a moment to cool down with “Write Me A Letter.”
The song starts with a sweeter sound and effortless, interval-jumping vocal control.
Matty Healy and George Daniel of The 1975’s production is instantly noticeable. They most recognisably contribute moments of sparkly guitar, glassy instrumental sounds, and a faint noodling in the outro. They may have even lent echoing backing vocals, creating richness.
All of these elements complement Beabadoobee’s style and focus for Pylon well. The ending’s crashing cymbals and pure rock riff moments dominate, with minor chords adding the perfect moodiness to bring everything together.
“It’s Alright” continues the album’s streak of firmly establishing its guitar melodies in each song’s intro. While it stylistically sounds too much like previous tracks, it’s ultimately a lovable and satisfying pop-rock strongpoint that concert crowds could scream happily.
The album reassumes a slow ballad tone for “In Motion”; while its humming feels distracting initially, the track eventually settles into balanced early-2000s rock.
Through her echoing, distant vocal elements to octave-splitting high, shouty, and robust low tones, Beabadoobee conveys the feeling of being lost and trapped effectively.
Lines like “drowning noises with the voices swirling in my head” capture a strong lyrical adherence to the track and project’s theme.
Plunging guitar moments between harmonies and lo-fi-inspired electronic sounds make this song surpass the bleak emo-indie vibe it suggests early on.
While “Memories” follows this bold production with repetitive-seeming melodies, hollow percussion and indie-folk guitar lines rejuvenate them.
This track’s lyrics are some of the album’s most striking, describing memories as shades of blue, the feeling of 3 a.m., and rain on pavement. The way Beabadoobee expresses these lyrics makes the memories she describes feel like the listener’s own.
Nostalgia turns to rebellion in defiant-sounding “Nothing To Prove.” The rock palette and electric guitar strike immediately but leave the rest of the song feeling underwhelming.
Hayley Williams of Paramore joins this track, providing dynamic duet lines that help shape a pleasant blended vocal sound.
Despite offering compelling, well-matched yet sharply different vocal tones, the track was missing some depth, thriving solely on its sense of fun.
“Radio” once again sees a drastic emotional flip, this time into self-deprecating darkness. The track feels reminiscent of Avril Lavigne’s 2000s rock-defining style.
This song feels a bit overused, seeming to borrow chunks of previous tracks. It sounds a bit lyrically disconnected and shallow, and the vocal melody doesn’t match the track’s gritty, guitar-generated toughness.
Strum-heavy “Powerlines” centres a desperate and haunted tone, which Beabadoobee sustains through an echo-forward vocal thinness.
The guitar lines are bursting with intricacy and tension, taking on Beabadoobee’s low verse melodies to harmonise with her higher chorus phrases.
Brendan Yates of Turnstile contributes a solid, simple harmony that blends well with the overall tone.
“Spark” amplifies the tension of “Powerlines” by outlining a scissors-in-the-outlet, “purple spark” in “obnoxious dark” experience. This is another Avril Lavigne-rooted track that drifts between electric and acoustic style elements.
While it doesn’t introduce any new musical elements, the track still brings something pleasant to the album.
“Despite That” brings amplified energy to the same tension as the previous song. The hushed vocals got wiped out completely by instrumental distortion, and this made for an unpleasant listen.
The album closes with “Satellite,” a more indie-sounding track with a draggy flow.
Beabadoobee describes feeling lost and “orbiting” her phone; she spends the song waiting for someone to return a call, doomscrolling, and feeling split in half. She’s speaking on behalf of her generation, saying “the beatniks have their poetry, but what do we know?” and wishing she knew “how to cope with the times.”
The backing music was fitting and supportive of her metaphors for phone addiction, but the distorted tension applied to her vocals gets buried and should have been the centre of the song’s tension.
Pylon pays homage to emo-era influences skillfully, while providing standout moments on most tracks that keep the album engaging.
Originality concerns aside, Beabadoobee’s creative direction and musical prowess are apparent on this project and bound to bring energy to her stadium-tour crowds.
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