beabadoobee Pylon

Critic's Take

beabadoobee keeps her knack for balancing sweetness and noise front and centre on Pylon, and the best songs on Pylon prove it. Dan Harrison leans into the immediacy of “Sun Has Set”, praising its inviting chorus and yearning brevity, while “Memories” is singled out as affecting for its warmth and wistful vocal. He also flags “Write Me A Letter” and “Powerlines” as highlights thanks to notable collaborators, but it is the intimate-big moments like “Satellite” that make the album feel built for both small rooms and arenas. The writing sometimes wants more detail, yet Laus's melodies and voice routinely keep you listening.

Key Points

• “Sun Has Set” is the best song for its inviting chorus and concise, memorable structure.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee keeps sharpening her voice on Pylon, where intimacy and anger sit side by side, and the best tracks - like “Pylon” and “Nothing To Prove” - crystallise that tension. The opening lines of “Pylon” immediately set the tone, fragile yet defiant, while “Nothing To Prove” benefits from Hayley Williams' controlled presence, lifting the record into crossover territory. Elsewhere “Estranged” and “Switchblade” deliver some of the album's most satisfying climaxes, trading unassuming starts for moody, cathartic choruses. Overall the album balances loud-quiet-loud dynamics and melodic moments in a manner that makes the best songs on Pylon feel both immediate and intimate.

Key Points

• The best song, "Pylon", is best for setting the album's intimate, defiant tone from the first lines.
• The album's core strength is balancing aggressive guitar climaxes with melodic, intimate moments to make distance feel familiar.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee's Pylon is at its best when it lets guitars do the talking, and the album's fiercest moments - “Sun Has Set” and “Switchblade” - feel like concentrated statements of intent, full of rage edged with melody. Petridis writes with a measured eye for detail, noting how a track like “Spark” provides a disarming sweetness before the record repeatedly tips into sulphurous fuzz. The record's closing turn, “Satellite”, is used almost as a coda to the fame-themed lyrics, while the jaunty bite of “Write Me A Letter” shows Laus's knack for marrying pop nous to grungy textures. The result is an album that argues, persuasively, that her reach should be broader, even as it luxuriates in distortion and distinctly personal complaints about life on the road.

Key Points

• Sun Has Set is the best track for its ferocious guitar riff and blunt lyrical revenge.
• Pylon's core strength is marrying 90s alt-rock distortion with pop melody and frank lyrical themes about fame and growing up.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee keeps steering her evolution on Pylon, where collaborations serve as arguments rather than distractions. The reviewer's tone delights in how tracks like “Powerlines” and “Write Me A Letter” foreground her authorship, with Brendan Yates' falsetto cutting through gritty guitars on “Powerlines” and midwestern emo twinkle opening “Write Me A Letter”. It feels like a record that collects influences into a clearer sense of self, a running playlist that nonetheless has unmistakable beabadoobee fingerprints.

Key Points

• The best song is "Powerlines" because its guest falsetto and gritty guitars showcase collaboration that deepens her authorship.
• The album's core strength is assembling varied collaborators into a cohesive, evolving sense of self rather than a scattershot playlist.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee leans into jagged, gloriously pissed-off rock on Pylon, and the best songs on Pylon prove why the shift works. Rob Sheffield’s voice catches the record’s bratty, Nineties-loving swagger when he praises tracks like “Sun Has Set” and “Write Me A Letter” as snarling, emotionally sharp highlights. He points to the bruising single “Sun Has Set” as the tone-setter and celebrates “Write Me A Letter” and “Switchblade” for their sharper songwriting, so listeners searching for the best tracks on Pylon will find those cuts central. The review reads like a toast to guitar fury and messy growth, a record that sounds like she is just getting started.

Key Points

• The best song is "Sun Has Set" because it sets the album's bruising tone with snarling vocals and guitar aggression.
• Pylon's core strengths are jagged guitar textures, sharp songwriting, and emotionally candid lyrics rooted in Nineties indie-rock.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee threads sweetness and snarling grunge across Pylon, and the best songs on the album prove that contrast is her advantage. The standout “Switchblade” channels mid-90s alt-rock with off-kilter guitars and a shouty outro that makes the album’s mood click. Altogether, the best songs on Pylon balance abrasive textures with sticky melodies in ways that feel deliberate and earned.

Key Points

• “Switchblade” is the album’s standout due to its off-kilter guitars and shouty outro that crystallize the record’s alt-rock ambition.
• Pylon’s core strength is its contrast between sticky melodic hooks and newly abrasive, grungier textures.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee's Pylon is a record that courts its '90s indie-rock influences while being hamstrung by short song lengths and cautious production. The review praises “Sun Has Set” for its memorable guitar work and relish in anger, and highlights “Switchblade” as proof of Laus' knack for sticky hooks. Yet tracks like “In Motion” and the collaborations on “Nothing To Prove” and “Powerlines” are described in the same clipped, unfinished terms that recur across the album. If you search for best songs on Pylon, the reviewer points you to “Sun Has Set” and “Switchblade” as the album's real standouts, even as the record often feels too neat and truncated to fully deliver.

Key Points

• The best song is “Sun Has Set” for its memorable guitars and commanding delivery.
• The album's core strengths are its '90s indie-rock touchstones and occasional sticky hooks, undermined by short, unfinished arrangements and cautious production.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee leans into louder, abrasive textures on Pylon, but Aimee Ferrier argues the polished production undermines that ferocity. She singles out “It’s Alright” as emblematic of predictable, anthemic songwriting and praises the collaboration-driven “Powerlines” as the standout. Ferrier retains affection for gentler moments like “Despite That” and “Memories”, yet insists the record feels too manufactured to fully convince. The result is a record with appealing hooks but limited authenticity when answering which are the best tracks on Pylon.

Key Points

• The reviewer names “Powerlines” the standout largely due to its guest and prominence.
• The album’s core strength is Beatrice Laus’ vocal range, but over-polished production undermines authenticity.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee leans into a grittier, angrier palette on Pylon, and the record's best songs are the ones that let that rawness breathe. The title track “Pylon” is a quiet-then-explosive peek into touring isolation that hits with real emotional force. The rock ballad “Sun Has Set” and the grungy “Switchblade” show how Beatrice uses strained vocals and gnarly guitars to make discomfort feel urgent. The closing “Satellite” is the album's most arresting moment, where her screeched vocals nearly summon a hardcore catharsis.

Key Points

• The best song is the title track "Pylon" because it turns quiet isolation into a cathartic distorted crescendo.
• The album's core strength is its shift into grittier, more lived-in alternative rock that conveys growing-up pain.

Themes

Critic's Take

beabadoobee’s Pylon is a rawer, more restless record that finds its best songs in moments of contrast, where fuzz and tenderness collide. The title track “Pylon” opens with distorted guitars that give way to a surprisingly tender take on distance, and “Switchblade” stands out as one of the record’s sharpest moments with its loose, slacker guitars and weary resignation. Equally notable are “Memories” and “Powerlines”, the former a deceptively simple nostalgic highlight and the latter a muscular exploration of returning to someone across time. These best tracks on Pylon illustrate how Laus balances melodic pop instincts with abrasive textures, making the heavier sound feel like an expansion rather than a rejection of her earlier work.

Key Points

• The best song moments come from contrasts between Laus’ gentle voice and heavier, grungy instrumentation.
• Pylon’s core strength is balancing melodic pop instincts with abrasive textures to expand her sound.

Themes