Beabadoobee Beck September: September 18 saw two of 2024’s most anticipated indie records arrive at once, forcing listeners to choose between Beabadoobee’s visceral new chapter and Beck’s moody introspection.
When Beabadoobee and Beck both released albums on September 18, indie Twitter collectively held its breath. Two albums that had commanded separate corners of the underground’s attention suddenly demanded the same moment: Beabadoobee released “Pylon,” a record that marked her loudest, most confident statement yet, while Beck quietly placed “Ride Lonesome” into the world, a meditation on solitude wrapped in his signature experimental production. The simultaneity wasn’t strategic posturing, it was pure coincidence that created the most interesting fork in the road for alternative music fans all year.
“Pylon” arrived as Beabadoobee’s most assertive work to date, channeling the guitar-forward energy and emotional directness that had been brewing since “Beatopia.” The album felt urgent in a way her previous releases didn’t quite reach, each track moving with purpose rather than the bedroom-pop diffidence that had defined her early years. Her voice, always capable of cutting through noise, felt sharper here, more willing to let vulnerability collapse into something rawer. Critics who’d watched her navigate the tightrope between commercial appeal and underground credibility suddenly saw the answer: she’d chosen to push harder rather than soften her edges.
Beck’s “Ride Lonesome” took an entirely different temperature. Where Beabadoobee swung for immediate emotional impact, Beck constructed intricate soundscapes that rewarded patient listening, his production choices layered beneath lyrics that suggested isolation without dramatizing it. The album felt like the natural evolution of someone who’d spent decades learning to say more with less, trading the maximalism that had defined earlier work for something more spare and considered. Both records possessed that rare quality of sounding like they’d been made by artists at complete peace with their own visions, indifferent to trend cycles or genre borders.
Both Beabadoobee and Beck’s simultaneous September releases possessed that rare quality of sounding like they’d been made without compromise, yet in utterly opposite directions. For indie listeners, the choice between them felt less like a competition and more like an embarrassment of riches, two artists at completely different points in their careers, speaking completely different musical languages, both demanding attention on the exact same day.
