beabadoobee Turns the Blade Inward on “Switchblade”

A distorted second cut from Pylon asks whether courage means fighting back or walking away.

Distorted guitar and stray sound effects open the track before beabadoobee settles into a rhythmic, undertone delivery: “I’m a switchblade, cuttin’ through an open space / Need a reminder, you start to feel like a graze.” The song, born Beatrice Kristi Ilejay Laus, uses the folded blade as a stand-in for a question she does not resolve, whether bravery looks like starting a confrontation or choosing to leave one behind. The refrain returns to that fork without picking a side: self-defense as a form of courage, but courage that could just as easily mean the fight or the flight.

The record was produced by Laus alongside Jason Vance Harris and Luca Caruso, and the arrangement leans into a slow-creeping alt-rock build, gritty low end giving way to a twinkly, midwest-emo-inflected guitar passage before the track closes on a chant-along vocal tag. Reviewers have pointed to a ’90s alt-rock lineage running through the song, the kind of record that sits comfortably between Stone Temple Pilots and Alanis Morissette on a playlist. The bass carries more of the song’s tension than the vocal does, sitting under the noise as a kind of ballast while Laus keeps her phrasing level rather than pushing toward a big chorus moment.

By the second verse the blade metaphor gives way to something plainer: “Feeling worn thin, can I learn to trust again,” beabadoobee sings, before landing on a line about growing old breaking down whatever gets mended along the way. It’s a shift from image to plain statement that mirrors the song’s larger refusal to resolve itself, closing on flicker and fade rather than a settled answer.

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“Switchblade” is the fourth track and second single from Pylon, Laus’ fourth studio album, arriving September 18 through Dirty Hit and Interscope Records. It follows “Sun Has Set,” the album’s opening track and first single, which came paired with a first-person video directed by Jake Erland, Laus’ partner and longtime visual convincer. Laus has described Pylon as a record written largely on the road, its title borrowed from the electricity towers that reminded her of home while touring behind her 2024 album This Is How Tomorrow Moves. Guests across the fourteen-track set include Hayley Williams of Paramore, Turnstile’s Brendan Yates, Pinegrove’s Evan Stephens Hall, and Chino Moreno of Deftones, though “Switchblade” itself carries no featured artist.

 

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Laus will bring the new material to the Powerlines Tour, her first arena run, opening October 1 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut and extending through Madison Square Garden, the Kia Forum, and arena dates across the UK and Europe.