Like a pylon on an open road, we’re disconnected from reality, being held like a screen. Beabadoobee calls on our addiction to technology and love in her newest album, Pylon. This is her fourth studio album produced by Rick Rubin and her long time collaborator Jacob Bugden. This album features 14 tracks, clocking in at 40 minutes, with 2 features, one from Hayley Williams and the other from Brendan Yates.
The opening track Pylon sets the tone for the entire album, explores relationships and her experience living through love while being on tour. While on tour for This Is How Tomorrow Moves, she wrote and recorded this entire album inside of hotel rooms with her bandmates. Her inspiration for titling the album came from the distance between her partner while touring the country, and staying in contact through telephone calls, which utilize pylons to connect them together. Genius states that “In [Pylon] she uses the tall steel electrical towers to resemble her and her partner’s relationship while touring in new places” reinforcing the albums overarching theme of connection over distance. The word pylon can be taken in two ways, traffic cones and construction, or large electrical towers sitting in vast emptiness. I believe she was referring to how huge structures can sit unnoticed for years, but they are the key component to staying connected across long distances. Though these powerlines and technology give us a sense of closeness, it is never the same as being with that person. Bea comments on this in her opening lines, “I’d rather be nowhere with you / Than somewhere without you”. She knows that it will never be real without them physically being there. Being on these tours and away from her emotional love, talking about she doesn’t know exactly where she is, but she’ll wait this out until she’s reunited.
Throughout this track we have multiple instrumental breaks with choppy fuzzy guitar chords and a hairy fry on the backing. Her instrumentation reminds of a disconnecting phone call, a signal breaking up like the pylons are giving up on her love almost as she starts to as well. As she ends the song, “every mile brings you near”, we get another instrumental break with the same fuzzy progressions growing towards a melancholic ending, transitioning into a more intense rollercoaster.
Sun Has Set opens with a loud fried guitar, the beginning lines not really making sense, “Steal / Weigh it down / Tough lovin”. Originally my thought was that she was talking about pylons again and the metal they’re made up of, but after her interview with Shygirl for BBC Radio 6 Music she says that the opening doesn’t have to make sense. This track is about an emotional and messy breakup and she wants this song to be reminiscent of a never ending argument between partners. She talks about how this person is “fake and affected” being someone who’s never really real, and is always performing; they lack direction and hold Bea down. A theme in a lot of her songs is pretending. Pretending to be friends or romantic lovers, she always finds herself coming back to this problem, a destructive one that often ruins relationships. While I haven’t had this exact experience, I have experienced this in some of my friendships. The idea that we’ll never be friends and we’ll never pretend has become incredibly clear in obviously her life. No one should give in to something that’s pretend, that doesn’t benefit either party. She has a mentality of not even thinking about it, it’s not worth her time. She mentions “there’s so much we left unsaid”, but doesn’t even try to mend the relationship because she knows it will really never change—which I agree with. If you can see the person’s true colors, why bother mending something that will just fall apart again?
In her next track Estranged, she talks about feeling estranged from something or someone. She doesn’t want to “fall in two” which can be taken in multiple ways, feeling split, falling into love, or over commitment. She talks about how she has a fever that she knows the other person doesn’t want. I understand her issues, having these feelings, but wanting to continue pushing forward. However, she doesn’t want these relationships to cause other people to catch her “fever.” She wants to keep it to herself, and fall in two. She mentions having told them to change, which she repeats multiple times “I told you (I told you, I told you)” making me believe this is ongoing and unresolved. Reinstating this idea of telling them something, it can easily be inferred that she’s still wishing for resolve. She mentions how they can hear her, but she knows they’ll refuse to find an answer, continuously refusing the change. She finds herself screaming she wants to go again and again, wanting to try and solve the issue, but in the constant endless cycle she feels estranged, and for some reason they keep coming back to her.
While not falling apart, It’s Alright, focuses on someone wasting her time. She starts the track by commenting on how in the past she’s had low expectations and she set her bar low. However, this new person proved her wrong, likely by buttering her up and making it seem better than reality. She begins to trust this person, asking them to “Take the Wheel”. Putting trust in them, she’s giving them parts of her life and letting them move with it. She’s wanting this person to take control of her life and give her direction. After falling for this person and trusting them with parts of her life, she realizes they’re wasting her time. The chorus goes “Waste my, waste my / Waste my time, waste my time / Take your, take mine / Take your time / And it’s alright / It’s alright”. At the end of the chorus she downplays the situation, “it’s alright”. . Verse two talks about how this person found a way into her life, how she let them get to her. Something I relate to, which I wish I didn’t. Somehow people can get to me, and somehow they always find a way in. Playing with emotions and taking a toll on my life.
The closing track, Satellite, cycles everything back, from the distance that Pylon closed, to the messy break ups, the happy moments, and everything in between. She feels like she’s hanging upside down, possibly a reference to landline phones not being hung up after a call, and a connection to her difficult relationships, where she doesn’t want to let them down on the phone where they walk away without hanging up. She talks about stolen moments, moments where the other might not have been listening or left her hanging upside down. Moments where she wished she was being heard, not judged, not ignored, but truly listened to. We’re human, we make mistakes, but that shouldn’t hold us captive. She holds her breath while dialing, likely out of fear. She calls hoping to bring the other back to her. After calling she looks up at the stars, hoping the satellite in the stars will offer some connection to them, like she’s stuck orbiting this person. Stuck in a loop, like a satellite. One of the themes of this album was technology and its damages, wishing she was able to give our “generation a new infatuation” but even she can’t cope and solve problems with our time. Wishing she could start a movement like the “beatnicks”, an anti-materialistic group of people in the early 20th century who had expression through different forms of art. She wraps the album with her references to orbiting around someone like a satellite, something I think all of us can relate to at some point. .
Words by Connor Crankshaw