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Photo by Erika Kamano

beabadoobee has never been an artist who needed the whole world to know her name, and she certainly hasn’t needed to have worldwide recognition to be one of the most important voices in music right now. To a devoted (and not to mention enormous) fanbase of the young people who have grown up alongside her, she’s not just an artist, she’s the reason half of TikTok started drawing on fake freckles a few years ago. That’s not just internet fame, it’s icon status. On her fourth album, Pylon, she’s beginning to sound like she knows it. 

Pylon is a record that swings and hits a home run, contrary to This Is How Tomorrow Moves, it’s quintessentially a rock record. Where This Is How Tomorrow Moves is a solid pop record, Pylon is wrapped with similar melodies ("Spark" in particular is sneaky in how sweet it is), drenched in fuzzy guitars, smacks you with hard hitting riffs, and Bea’s voice moves with what you might call a snarl. 

Pylon rolls deep with collaborators, but it doesn’t flatten the record. Paramore’s Hayley Williams shows up on “Nothing To Prove,” Turnstile’s Brendan Yates trades verses with her on the noisy, feedback-soaked “Powerlines,” and you’ll catch fingerprints from Matty Healy, George Daniel, and Deftones’ Chino Moreno scattered throughout. On paper that’s a lot of big names to share the space with. Although the guest list is stacked, it’s still Bea's show.

Thematically, Pylon is Bea processing the stuff that comes with the sudden onset of sustained fame: life on the road, the loneliness of arenas and green rooms, and the sting of discovering that some people only care about you once you’re successful. It could’ve felt distant coming from someone whose whole appeal is relatability, but she keeps it grounded. “Switchblade” turns the chaos of your early twenties into one of the record’s most catchy earworms, and the closer “Satellite” has her wrestling openly with what it means to be looked up to by a generation that’s, like her, still figuring themselves out. 

Other moments in the record like “Sun Has Set” are a clear knockout, it’s a vicious kiss-off to a fake friend riding on one of the album’s meanest riffs. “Write Me a Letter” does something even trickier, drifting in on a hazy, almost autumn-like mood before curdling into something angrier by the end, a trick Pylon pulls off more than once, sweetening a song just enough before letting the distortion swallow it whole. 

Pylon is Bea sounding more sure of herself than she ever has, not despite the noise, but because of it. She’s already got the streaming numbers and the arena tour to prove she doesn’t need to win over a bigger audience, but records this confident absolutely deserve one anyway. 

Listen to Pylon below: