Image credit: Erika Kamano

The British-Filipino singer sounds more confident and impactful than ever on her hard-hitting sixth album, which sets the loneliness of life on tour to a series of blissfully melodic tunes.

When was the last time you looked at an electricity pylon, really? Amongst other things, London-based songwriter Beabadoobee’s sixth full-length record is a reminder of the brutalist beauty of those mainstays of suburban landscapes. She imagines them connected as if romantically holding hands on the title track, and muses on how the communication they facilitate are fundamental to modern long-distance romances on several tracks here. The music video for lead single and highlight Sun Has Set is even partly set in a pylon-dominated green field at sunset, the shag-haired singer frolicking under those giant metal skeletons to the sound of a suitably high-voltage current of volatile guitars and static.

Beabadoobee wrote much of Pylon staring out of her coach window whilst touring Europe and the US, and a repressed longing for her distant boyfriend thrums throughout these melancholy tracks like a fuse about to blow. The complex strains on the relationship are portrayed most powerfully on Write Me A Letter, which progresses from twiddly Midwest emo-style guitars to a borderline hardcore thrasher. Estranged’s nimble melodies are a match for the best indie rock hooks the 90s had to offer, whilst Memories is a sun-kissed dream of a song, pushing the same sort of blissfully bittersweet buttons Fontaines D.C.’s Favourite pushed a few years ago. With any luck, it will similarly become a festival fan favourite for Beabadoobee.

It’s not all essential. Spark’s “na na na” hook feels underwritten, and Hayley Williams – undoubtedly one of our generation’s greatest female rock vocalists – goes criminally underused in Nothing to Prove. But on the whole, Pylon is Beabadoobee’s most focussed and consistent record, not to mention her grungiest. Whilst her neat, breathy vocals can sometimes feel out of place with the grittier instrumentals, her restraint is worth it for the payoff on closing track Satellite, Beabadoobee finally purging her demons in an ascendent chorus melody. It’s so good you might even start appreciating electricity pylons.

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