On ‘Ricochet,’ the third album from Snail Mail, out now on Matador Records, Lindsey
Jordan returns to assert herself as a generational songwriter, clear-eyed and
honest as ever. Time has passed, but she remains a sensitive soul, and here her
incisive introspection is tethered to newly expansive and hypnotic melodies and
ornate string arrangements. While writing ‘Ricochet,’ Jordan found herself
fixating on concerns she’d previously pushed out of her mind, namely death and
what happens after.
Jordan’s early music largely dealt with matters of the heart, a territory that she
tried to step beyond on ‘Ricochet.’ “Misery feels safe to write about because I am
good at it,” she says, “but I’m not bathing in my own agony anymore.” To feel the
pain of everything and then nothing is a lonesome contradiction. ‘Ricochet’ is a
record about being caught in this whirlpool, but Jordan’s music has never been
so transcendent. The luminous opener, “Tractor Beam,” is driven by jangly
guitars, but is ultimately about dissociation and “feeling othered while
acknowledging that you’re spending a lot of your time and energy figuring out
how to float away.”
When it came time to record the songs bouncing around in her head, Jordan
turned to a friend, Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the bassist and producer of the fuzzy
indie rock band Momma. Jordan describes the process as refreshing, trusting,
and comfortable. “I felt like an equal voice,” she says. “He was as interested in
my decisions as I was in his.”
These 11 songs are colored by the anxiety of watching life slip through your
fingers, as well as the vulnerability of loving deeply rather than frenetically.
Ultimately, ‘Ricochet’ is an album about realizing—and accepting—that the world
still turns no matter what is going on in your tiny life.