Album Review: Beabadoobee’s Pylon

Mary O’Leary reviews Beabadoobee’s newest album Pylon ahead of the album’s September 18th rollout.

By Mary O'Leary | Sep 27 2026

Indie artist Beabadoobee’s newest album, Pylon, releases this September 18th bringing back her distinct sound and voice to the music scene. The album starts off with the title track, Pylon, introducing the album with an almost lament-like ballad over the loss of a person who’s now left behind the narrator and their relationship. Both the song’s name meaning and beautiful instrumental perfectly set the tone for the record’s incredible run. The album itself acts as a collection of what many would consider to be ‘heartbreak’ songs.

That being said, unlike most traditional heartbreak’ music, Beabadoobee completely avoids blaming or trying to shame the person whom the ‘heartbreak’ was with. Instead, she focuses inward on how she might have messed up in the relationship and on the melancholy feeling of missing someone. In fact, I’d argue that the overall ‘feeling’ or theme of the album would be this melancholic emotion attached to missing someone who is already left and yet whom you still love. The instrumentals follow this form as well, with songs switching back and forth between angry alt-rock anthems and sad soft melodies.

Beabadoobee’s voice is also a major highlight of this piece, with her uniquely light voice almost acting like its own instrument at times. Often her voice is used to contrast the harsh guitar and drums she is paired with. Songs like Sun Has Set, Estranged, and Its Alright do this perfectly, with their alt-rock influences acting in a similar vain to other Beabadoobee’s songs such as Talk or Apple Cider.

Pylon also sees her collabing with Paramore singer, Haley Williams on the track Nothing to
Prove and Brendan Yates on the track, Powerlines. Whilst I quite enjoyed the collab with
Haley Williams and felt she gave great backing locals in what honestly felt more like a
paired duet, Brendan Yates’s feature was not as rewarding. Though a more traditional duet,
his glaringly low voice did not match the beautiful instrumental or Beabadoobee’s soft
range. I would have been much more okay with this contrast if his voice as also a distinct
pitch of deep, but it instead sounded quite generic to most other male voices in music
today. In all honesty, this song would have most likely been one of my favorites if not for
this jarring contrast.

Apart from this one downside, I really enjoyed this album and found that Beabadoobee did
a wonderful job creating a vast yet cohesive sound for this work. Though some songs had a
more simplistic use of lyricism, this is by no means a negative as the instrumentals of each
track and tone of her voice continue to tell a story of melancholy throughout. Regarding
lyricism, however, songs like Pylon, Memories, Power lines, Radio, Spark, and Satellite
really stand out.

What I found particularly interesting was the way in which systems of communication were
used as a way to story-tell throughout the album. She first starts off with written letters in

the song prompted named, Write Me a Letter, before moving onto the radio and then to
satellite devices, both also the names of songs on this record- each in this respective
order. I found this evolution of communication devices to also mirror how the narrator is
moving further and further away from the other person emotionally. Though the ease of
communication is growing, it is their feelings of shame and yearning that ironically hold
them back.

Within this album lineup, my personal favorite songs were Pylon, Memories, Estranged,
and Despite That. Memories was especially a standout and was an absolutely perfect
choice for a single. I found that not only did it musically and lyrically present the album’s
themes, in general it is also one of the most beautiful songs amongst the record. As a fan of
Beabadoobee songs like Beaches and Ever Seen, it felt as if it was the natural evolution of
the singer’s musical style.

As this album rollout begins, long time Beabadoobee fans will surely be pleased with the
unique yet phonetically connected aspect of this new work.