The British singer/songwriter was just 18 years old at the time, but the comments on the video were distinguishing her as an old soul, with the verses’ muted, chugging guitars and charming lyrics harkening back to '90s pop-rock.

Those comments were right. Laus has made it very clear over the course of her career that her biggest influences are the indie titans of the '90s, particularly Elliott Smith and Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus. The former she made merch inspired by, covered in two separate charity compilations, and name dropped in a song; the latter, she named a song after directly.

That vision came to fruition with her sorely overlooked 2020 debut . The grittiness of the record’s guitar tones exemplified on “Sorry” and “Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene” and the lyrical sassiness of songs like “Dye It Red” and “Care” positioned her as a true rockstar in the making.

Unfortunately, though, beabadoobee’s most quantifiable successes have been her less intentional moments. The cutesy stage name she chose as a teenager has pigeonholed what one may expect from her music: perhaps it sounds more like her breakout single “Coffee” or the Valentine’s Day Instagram story staple “Glue Song”. The former, when sampled in the flash-in-the-pan COVID lockdown hit “death bed (coffee for your head)”, made Laus a charting artist, and the track remains her most streamed song by an enormous margin.

, her fourth LP, aims to dispel the preconceived notions the public may have of beabadoobee. Its accompanying visuals are gritty and rough around the edges, with promotional photos revealing Laus' newly cut pseudo-mullet with streaks of highlights as she plays in mud. With lead single "Sun Has Set", a return to her strengths looked to be on the horizon. The track courses through groove changes flawlessly, harbours ’s most memorable guitar work, and finds Laus expressing her anger towards a newfound foe with panache.

Second single “Switchblade” only reinforced the hype, exemplifying her penchant for sneakily sticky hooks. A cautionary tale of self-destruction, “Switchblade” burns slow with Laus' screamed backing vocals rounding out its grit. But the tease of what could have been an exhilarating guitar solo ends the track, highlighting one of ’s greatest weaknesses: it often sounds unfinished. “In Motion”, for example, has the potential to be a texturally rich rock ballad, with plucky piano and glitchy synths that take influence from Laus’ collaborators in The 1975, but the song ends just as those elements are being introduced.

Few songs on surpass the three-minute mark, and that’s by design. At this point, a large share of beabadoobee’s audience found her on TikTok, and much of this record plays it safe, short, and sweet to best service that audience. is Laus’ first outing with Interscope Records in partnership with longtime label Dirty Hit, and the suits funding this record could very well be its biggest inhibitors. The LP was primarily produced by Gianluca Buccellati and Jason Vance Harris, neither of whom seem to have backgrounds in rock, so it’s not difficult to guess why their names are conveniently left out of promotional materials.

Instead, ’s marquee personnel have all the markings of a buzzy new rock album. “Nothing To Prove” and “Powerlines” see features from Hayley Williams and Turnstile frontman Brendan Yates respectively, but striking while the iron is hot doesn’t always spark gold. “Nothing To Prove” does good on its title by communicating nothing with vague lyricism and bland, by-the-book instrumentation. Williams is blasphemously relegated to backing vocals; if you’re not paying attention, you’d miss her presence on the track entirely. Yates, while awarded an eight-bar verse, is also woefully underutilised. There's a power and grit to his voice that can be heard on almost any Turnstile song, but on “Powerlines” he is reduced to a Sting impersonator, drowned in unnecessary amounts of reverb.

’s other notable contributors are members of disbanded, revered indie-rock bands that find themselves working on the widest-reaching music of their careers, but the hallmarks of their best work have you parsing liner notes to find out what exactly they contributed. “Spark”, a co-write with Pinegrove frontman Evan Stephens Hall, has none of the writerly confessionalism that made people fall in love with that band, and instead relies on “na na na”s to fill the space.

Title Fight’s Shane Moran, while contributing some of most dynamic guitar work, is not awarded the headbang-worthy tones his performances would typically be treated with. Instead, we’re left with whatever an Interscope A&R’s personal definition of “midwest emo” is. The baseline hallmarks of any good rock record are treated as novelty on under the watch of producers who seem to not know any better.