Hi, I'm Epotty and I'm here for the review for the new beabadoobee album, Pylon.

This is the fourth studio album for beabadoobee, as well as my second review for her on this channel. beabadoobee got her start in the late 2010s with a string of EPs.

With those projects ranging from dream pop to chamber folk to lo-fi, beabadoobee quickly became one of the most beloved acts in the alternative space. This love only furthered with her debut studio album, Fake It Flowers, and the subsequent Beatopia, which were both met with glowing reviews and landed her huge opening spot acts for Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and The 1975.

Her third album, This Is How Tomorrow Moves, was another huge step for Beatrice, as it was labeled by critics as her first real adult album. However, despite that label, and despite tons of catchy melodies and sentimental themes, there seemed to still be a lot of room for Beatrice to grow within her art. It touched on relationships, but it really didn't dive into what makes relationships ugly or what makes them beautiful. It was grungy, but still too sonically safe to really be angry.

And here, two years later, we arrive at Pylon, where we get to see if Beatrice makes leaps and bounds in both of those regards. Prior to its release, it was clear that Beatrice was aiming for something grittier and grungier, donning a more edgier, stylistic aesthetic, grittier visuals, and teaming up with both iconic and rising acts in the rock and alternative metal space.

And upon numerous listens, it's clear that Beatrice makes at least some strides that push her music towards more darker, unbridled, and ultimately more interesting territory. Starting off with how the record sounds, the instrumentation leads the album into spaces heavily inspired by midwest emo, alternative metal, and post-hardcore.

Through feedback distortion, wall-to-wall crushing guitars, fuzz pedals, and even screeched vocals, Beatrice sheds her former friendly safe sound for something much more real. And I think it seems more real because it's a sound that feels lived in rather than replicated.

It really seems that beabadoobie has taken the time to study and explore these genres and that perhaps the rawness of this record comes from what she's learned from her peers, from what she's experienced on tour, and used these genres to express how she's felt growing through her 20s. Listening to the record, I believe Beatrice found more power in letting the music and the sound of the record speak to how she felt rather than words. And a lot of what she's felt is the unsettling loneliness of growing up and the pain that comes from living more life.

It kicks off with the opening and title track, "Pylon," where she gives us a peek into her isolation of her life on tour. Speaking to a distant loved one, she says that she would rather be nowhere with them than somewhere without them, asking them to hold her through a screen so that they could be connected in some way, even though it's a way not rooted in reality.

And it's while she's singing that her voice and the instrumentation is sweet, soft, and somber that it almost makes you believe that you're on the edge of tipping over. Through the stripped back instrumentation, you're waiting for the entire song to uncover just how Beatrice feels, and at the final minute of the song, just as she finishes singing, the instrumentation drops into a crescendo of electric distorted guitars.

And it's that distortion that expresses and exposes how her isolation is pushing her to an explosive brink. The following track "Sun Has Set" is a straightforward angsty rock ballad where she is rejecting someone from her past, proclaiming that she will never be friends with this person again, that she will never pretend that their abandonment was okay, and that she's fine with leaving everything that was left unsaid.

The lyrics are fairly straightforward with not much room for interpretation, but it's Beatrice using her voice as an instrument, pushing her vocals to a place that audibly sounds uncomfortable, that truly elicits the emotion of this song, the discomfort that comes with rejecting something that you grew out of or that no longer serves you.

"Switchblade" is another example where beabadoobee does a great job at showing rather than telling, using angsty guitars and slow-paced drums to create a 90s grungy feel. Where that 90s era perfectly matches the frustration beabadoobee is expressing with the never-endingness of growing pains, the seething anger of never moving forward in your 20s. Where you're met with almost this apathetic anger because every day feels like an endless loop where you're breaking the things that you hoped to mend.

Similarly, "Powerlines," which features this especially moody feature from Brendan Yates of Turnstile, is filled with haze, it's filled with fuzz. It feels constantly on the edge of something darker than it already is just like the codependent relationship she's describing on the song.

There are certain moments on the album where the instrumentation tells no further story than the lyrics allow, which leaves you feeling wanting more. For example, on a song like "Estranged," it's the closest thing we get on the album to something more pop-rock-leaning, it's punchy, it's catchy, but at no point does she lyrically or sonically dive into the confusion of what it feels like to want to be a strange or further away from someone that you used to love.

The same can be said for the song "Write Me A Letter", which I found to be, again, both lyrically and sonically lackluster. Yes, the soft, grungy first half of the song eventually climaxes into another explosion of guitars, but at that point, it's almost a little too late after two minutes of lyrics like "Need you to stay, you make me better" and "You're older and bipolar / The weather is getting colder."

And all of that said, while this is a huge step forward for Beatrice, the experimental rock space feels more competitive than ever right now. And to legitimize herself as a true force to be reckoned with within this space, I feel like she could have gone even a little weirder, a little more out there, a little more experimental. While she certainly makes a very honest contribution into this space, there wasn't really a singular moment where my mind was completely blown by something I had never heard before.

It perhaps sounded like maybe she still wanted to keep it a little on the safer side not to scare away mainstream appeal. The closest that we get to a WTF moment on the album is on the final track, "Satellite," which is honestly the perfect note to leave the record on, where towards the end of the song, Beatrice is screeching like a hardcore punk star using her voice as a driving instrument. There's a lot of moments, but it's probably the rawest and truest moment where you can both feel and hear her experienced pain in growing up.

While I do think she could have pushed the boundaries a little more, I think she did a really good job at letting the genre shift take center stage and speaking to how she feels as a 20-something-year-old. That is why I'm feeling a light seven on this one.

Beabadoobee. Pylon. Forever.