{"id":774509,"date":"2026-09-18T08:16:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774509\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T08:16:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T08:16:15","slug":"beabadoobee-pylon-album-review-pitchfork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/774509\/","title":{"rendered":"Beabadoobee: Pylon Album Review | Pitchfork"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, the fashion writer Biz Sherbert went to a Deftones<\/a> concert in Atlanta and interviewed<\/a> attendees before the show. The 2020s revitalization of the alt-metal pioneers is pretty well established at this point, but Sherbert\u2019s documentation showed off the band\u2019s popularity with young women specifically; she photographed teenagers and college students in miniskirts and tank tops, many of whom had discovered Deftones algorithmically, through Spotify or TikTok. The scene looked a lot different than the one I remember from seeing the band in 2003 in a sea of black-clad nu-metal bros. One group of young women even called Deftones a \u201cgirl band,\u201d exclaiming, \u201cThis is girly pop music!\u201d<\/p>\n

So when Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno shows up to do backing vocals for the last track of Beabadoobee<\/a>\u2019s latest album, it makes all the sense in the world, Beatrice Laus, currently 26 years old, has made her share of music that could be called \u201cgirly pop,\u201d but with her fourth studio album, Pylon, she threads the needle between her usual brand of sweet-but-melancholic pop rock, and a newer, rougher sound. The ingredients that gave 2024\u2019s This Is How Tomorrow Moves<\/a> its darling tweeness\u2014peppy horns, tender piano\u2014have been replaced with elements that will please anyone who spent their adolescence learning how to professionally glower: tapped harmonics, twirly twin guitar loops, sludgy riffs, screeching feedback. It\u2019s a reverse Sour Patch Kid situation\u2014first Beabadoobee was sweet, now she\u2019s getting sour.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

To solidify the vibe shift, Laus has tapped an impressive breadth of alt-rock stars from the past couple of decades. Besides Moreno, we get vocals from Hayley Williams<\/a>, guitar and songwriting contributions from Title Fight<\/a>\u2019s Shane Moran, one song co-written with Evan Stevens Hall from Pinegrove<\/a> (one of Laus\u2019s favorite bands, to the point of her getting a Pinegrove neck tattoo last year), and an appearance from Turnstile<\/a>\u2019s Brendan Yates so dour that, at first listen, I thought he was Bladee<\/a>. The guestlist is stacked, but nothing on the album sounds particularly like Pinegrove or Deftones or Title Fight (Paramore is maybe the closest comp). Rather, the guests seem like they\u2019re here to gently cheer on the grunge-ification of typical Beabadoobee mode: easily digestible lyrics about the turbulent emotions of young adulthood with sticky, straightforward melodies.<\/p>\n

Laus\u2019 2020 album Fake It Flowers<\/a> had its share of dissonance, but Pylon is much more committed to getting heavy. The title track opens the album and sets the tone, building a churning, Goo Goo Dolls<\/a>-y string arrangement to complement Laus\u2019 somewhat oblique simile about long-distance relationships and electricity pylons, then pulling the pin on a grenade of distortion, its static crackling loud enough to scratch your eardrums raw. \u201cRadio\u201d juices an I bet you think this song is about you theme with a big, sarcastic guitar riff that zigzags over a thick bed of fuzz. Laus\u2019 voice, always a source of lightness in her songs, has developed a pleasant, fluttery vibrato over the past couple of years, but the moments when she tries to match the intensity of the music by pushing her vocals to the edge\u2014snarling on the pop punk-ish \u201cSun Has Set,\u201d or shouting \u201cHonesty is hard to come by!\u201d amid snarky gang vocals on \u201cIn Motion\u201d\u2014draw attention to how hard she has to work to sound pissed off. It actually feels more interesting when she lets the radiance of her vocals shine over the more abrasive sounds. This contrast is best demonstrated on \u201cWrite Me a Letter,\u201d an indie pop track that turns into a mall-punk anthem midway through. \u201cNeed you to stay\/You make me better,\u201d Laus sings with maximum earnestness, her voice soaring over crunching, syncopated guitars that would have gone crazy auto-playing on a MySpace profile in 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, the fashion writer Biz Sherbert went to a Deftones concert in Atlanta and interviewed attendees before…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[375,96,128,56,54,55,307],"class_list":["post-774509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}