Beabadoobee released her fourth studio album, "Pylon," on Friday, a record that trades much of the hushed bedroom-pop sound that built her audience for distorted guitars, grunge textures and Midwest emo phrasing. The Filipino-British singer, born Beatrice Laus, wrote the songs while touring behind her 2024 album "This Is How Tomorrow Moves," drawing on what critics described as isolation, nostalgia and romantic frustration from the past two years on the road.
The album, out via Dirty Hit and Interscope, was shaped with an unusually heavy roster of collaborators for Laus: Paramore's Hayley Williams, Turnstile guitarist Brendan Yates, Deftones frontman Chino Moreno, Pinegrove's Evan Stephens Hall, and the 1975's Matty Healy and George Daniel all contributed, while former Title Fight guitarist Shane Moran co-wrote eight of the record's tracks.
A harder-edged turn
Reviewers have largely read "Pylon" as a deliberate rupture from the softer, string-laden sound of Laus's recent work. Writing in Rolling Stone, critics praised the album's "raw guitar aggression," noting audible debts to 1990s indie-rock bands such as Sonic Youth, Helium and Dinosaur Jr. running through the record's feedback-heavy production.
Not every reviewer was won over by the shift. A review in The Mancunion argued the album's attempt to marry Laus's earlier, gentler style with its new heavier one sometimes works against itself, describing a tension between "past beabadoobee" and the artist's pursuit of a new sound. Others were more enthusiastic about the record's identity: a review at Studio One noted that in a pop landscape dominated by melancholy singer-songwriters such as Olivia Rodrigo, Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo, "Pylon" stands out simply because it rocks harder.
The album's lead single, "Sun Has Set," sets the tone with the lyric "When I say, 'We'll never be friends' / I mean, we'll never pretend," while later tracks range from "Write Me a Letter," which grapples with shame and anxiety over admitting fault, to the comparatively brighter "Memories." The closing track, "Satellite," includes the line "Everyday doom scrolling like I've lost all control," a rare direct nod to the anxieties of online life.
Growing into uncertainty
Laus, 26, first broke through in 2017 with the lo-fi single "Coffee" before releasing the acclaimed 2022 album "Beatopia" and the 2024 follow-up "This Is How Tomorrow Moves," both of which leaned toward polished, radio-friendly pop-rock. "Pylon" marks a deliberate step away from that trajectory, framed by several reviewers as an album about the unresolved messiness of being in one's mid-twenties rather than a tidy narrative of growing up.
"Pylon" is available now on Bandcamp and other streaming platforms. Laus has not yet announced tour dates in support of the record.
