On her debut album Switchbacks, Nashville-based artist Hannah Cole finds inspiration in the image of the switchbacks – sinuous twists in the road that obscure what’s ahead. For a young artist making her way in the music industry, it’s a powerful image: we can’t really know what’s ahead for us but – as Cole has learned – you should honk your horn to tell the world you're coming, and otherwise just enjoy the ride. Melding shoegaze and alternative rock with infectious pop melodies and strains of 90s nostalgia, Switchbacks is a commentary on the pursuit of success and how to protect the pure joy and love that lives at our core.
Cole, who grew up in Covington, Louisiana, moved to Nashville in 2019 to study music business and songwriting. There, she was exposed to new sounds and possibilities – and given the permission to dream big. Like her local musical kin Bully and Soccer Mommy, Cole found a way to merge a taste for heavier rock sounds with a studied sense of songwriting craftsmanship. It was this unique blend of style and technique that drew the attention of new independent label Tight Knit Records.
Cole and her longtime collaborator and partner Josef Kuhn recorded Switchbacks in their home studio between 2024 and 2025, playing nearly every instrument themselves. Aided by mixer Sonny Diperri (American Football, Wisp, Julie), the album features a much wider and denser sonic palette than Cole’s previous releases, with massive, cathartic splashes of sound that were constructed with the live show in mind.
Across the ten tracks of Switchbacks, Cole swings her gaze at many unsettling aspects of the scramble toward success. Lead single “MMA” explores the ugly side of the music industry through the image of Las Vegas. On the brightly off-kilter “Give,” she sings, “I feel like I’ve become an actor, / a TV pastor / climbing up a topless ladder,” explaining that “the pursuit of success can feel like buying lottery tickets all the time for money that you’ll never see.”
“Mechanical Bull” seethes with rage as Cole grapples with being seen as just the “girlfriend” in music settings and not being perceived as an equal to her partner, while on “Pitcher,” she’s paralyzed in the face of wanting to achieve perfection. Later, she shrugs off the need to impress on “100 Bucks,” reminding herself that she’s enough for the people she loves.
In the summer of 2025, the day after she got home from a successful run of shows opening for Silversun Pickups, Cole got a call that her aunt had passed away. A few days after that, she had a health scare of her own. The whiplash of events prompted her to think a lot about mortality and to reorient her priorities. “You need to slow down,” she told herself. “Life is so short and you need to be content with what you have now.” On hopeful closer “Every New Day,” she sings, “the record keeps on spinning,” reminding herself of the ephemerality of it all.
Switchbacks is not only a finely-crafted debut album but also a deeply human artifact, tracing an arc that blazes like a comet to the height of ambition and then leaves you in the shimmer of self-acceptance and contentment. “Success is a moment that comes and goes,” Cole concludes, “but I think the joy and experience that comes with making music is something I can take with me forever.”
