When Beabadoobee announced her fourth studio album Pylon in June, the signal was clear from the opening seconds of lead single Sun Has Set. The Filipino-British artist born Beatrice Laus had stepped away from the dreamy bedroom pop that first gathered millions of listeners and into something rougher, louder and far more confrontational. Pylon, out September 18 on Dirty Hit and Interscope, is the sound of an artist cranking the amplifiers and trusting the distortion.
Written On the Road, Alone
Laus has described the writing process for Pylon as a return to her beginnings, writing alone in hotel rooms between tour stops, a setting that reminded her of creating songs at seventeen in her bedroom. The result is a fourteen-track record that moves between isolation, anger, despair, euphoria and all-consuming love, often within the same song. Three singles have already surfaced. Sun Has Set arrived in June with an explosive breakup narrative directed by her partner and visual collaborator Jake Erland. Switchblade followed in July, leaning harder into the record's grunge influences. Memories, the most recent, is what Laus calls the happiest track on the album, though its sweetness is tempered by a line about clinging onto ideas that should make her happy but actually make her feel sad, because she wishes they were moments she could live in forever.
An Unlikely Cast of Collaborators
What makes Pylon genuinely surprising is the roster of guests. Hayley Williams appears on Nothing to Prove, a pairing that makes perfect sense when you hear the track's melodic ferocity. Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates contributes to Powerlines. Deftones vocalist Chino Moreno, Pinegrove's Evan Stephens Hall and Title Fight's Shane Moran all add texture to a record that draws heavily from '90s alternative rock and Midwest emo. The 1975's Matty Healy and George Daniel produce Write Me A Letter, bringing their polished studio instincts to a track that sits comfortably between Laus's indie roots and her new heavier terrain.
From Red Rocks to Madison Square Garden
The album took its name from the electricity pylons that reminded Laus of home while she was away touring. That sense of distance and return runs through the record, which she debuted in part during a headline show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in August, performing the title track alone on acoustic guitar. She told the crowd she was nervous, the first time playing it, apologising in advance if she made mistakes. The intimacy of that moment, one of the world's most dramatic natural stages reduced to a single person with a guitar, sits at the heart of what Pylon achieves at scale.
The Powerlines World Tour, her first arena run, begins October 1 in Uncasville, Connecticut, and takes in Madison Square Garden, the Kia Forum in Los Angeles and London's O2 Arena, among others. Wisp supports across North America, with Violet Grohl joining for the European leg. Two intimate UK release shows have also been confirmed: Kingston's Circuit with Banquet Records on September 15 and Hackney Church with Rough Trade on release day itself.
The Heavier Turn
Pylon follows This Is How Tomorrow Moves, which became Laus's first UK number one album in 2024. Where that record consolidated her gift for melodic songwriting, Pylon pushes the parameters outward. The grunge and alt-rock references are not cosplay or pastiche but feel lived-in, the product of someone who grew up on those sounds and is now confident enough to make them her own. For an artist who began by uploading lo-fi tracks from her bedroom, playing arenas with a record this raw and direct feels like exactly the kind of unlikely trajectory that makes following her career so compelling.