Beabadoobee has released Switchblade, the second song to be lifted from her hugely anticipated forthcoming album Pylon, a record that’s more wide-ranging and complex than anything that she has ever put out – a tannic rock record that is, at various points, angry, lonesome, ecstatic, depressed and deeply, pathologically in love.
Switchblade takes its central metaphor and pulls it apart thoroughly, wondering whether “Self-defence is to be brave / Do you start the fight / Or take flight?” The song has no clear answers, with Bea emphatically past the point in which she though she could ever have anything figured out.
Pylon, for all its turbulent emotions, celebrates the not-knowing; its brilliance suggests that sitting with uncertainty can create something immense, both emotionally and sonically. Its vast array of feelings, often contradictory ones, is the whole point, says Laus: “Pylon is about accepting that negative feelings are going to come back – accepting the insecurity and feeling confused. It’s all a necessary part of growing and knowing yourself better. You have to go through all that shit, I have to write about it”.
The follow up to her UK #1 album This Is How Tomorrow Moves, Pylon is available to pre-order now, due for release on 18 September via Dirty Hit and Interscope Records. Switchblade follows the album’s first single Sun Has Set, released to universal acclaim last month alongside a striking first-person video directed by Bea’s partner and longtime visual collaborator Jake Erland.
PYLON LP | TRACK LIST
• Pylon
• Sun Has Set
• Estranged
• Switchblade
• Write Me A Letter
• It’s Alright
• In Motion
• Memories
• Nothing To Prove
• Radio
• Powerlines
• Spark
• Despite That
• Satellite