Snail Mail returns with triumphant 3rd album ‘Ricochet’
The musician follows up her 2022 album ‘Valentine’, after taking time away to recover from surgery.
★★★★★
Photo: Daria Kobayashi Ritch
Five years can be a long time. Between records, it can be an eternity. For Lindsey Jordan, however, it was just the time she needed. Ricochet may be Jordan’s first album in five years, but her time in between records certainly wasn’t uneventful. After the wildly successful tour of her last album, Valentine, concluded in 2021, Jordan was forced to reconcile with time standing still.
Rather than planning her next move right away, Jordan had to undertake surgery for vocal polyps alongside undergoing intensive speech therapy. All of this time and care spent in recovery is reflected in the care and attention to detail on Ricochet. It features some of her most dazzling and confident vocals yet.
Album opener Tractor Beam is an effervescent and enigmatic ode to the art of dissociation and watching time float away. It instantly transports you into the slower, more reflective world that Jordan had been inhabiting over the past five years. It’s a cinematic and addictive slice of sunshine pop that sets the record right into action from the very get-go.
Whilst she was anxious about the passing of time, Jordan continued writing songs with a renewed effort and a determined patience to get things right. She notes that “It takes me a lot more time and consideration to make great melodies.” That patience certainly paid off. Ricochet is full of unassuming melodies that creep up on you on repeated listens, take hold of you and refusing to let you go. On Nowhere, Jordan infectiously exclaims that “I’m going nowhere, you’ll never catch me.” The chasing has never sounded so enjoyable.
As Jordan ran further away from her past, she made another change. She started acting. In 2024, she took a part in Jane Schoenbrun’s renowned indie horror I Saw the TV Glow. The film is soundtracked by Alex G, and it’s easy to see the influence of his looping, dense and mystical music all over the arrangements on Ricochet.
Recorded at North Carolina’s Fidelitorium Recordings with producer Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the album simply sounds stunning. In fact, the best possible word to describe it, as ever with Jordan, is lush. The strings sound lush. The guitars sound lush. Most of all, though, Jordan’s vocals sound lush. The arrangements wash over you and are soaked in the same sort of space and reverb that are reminiscent of shoegaze bands like Slowdive and Sunny Day Real Estate.
It may have taken five years, but Jordan assures us that she “isn’t bathing in her own agony anymore.” It is a somewhat tired trope that indie singer-songwriters are always journaling their own misery. Jordan is different. It is refreshing to hear her songs not sitting still in sorrow but navigating the rewards and pains of moving forward instead. Most artists who receive the level of success and acclaim that Jordan did with her previous records, Lush and Valentine, often struggle to keep up with their past, never mind move forward from it with as much confidence as she does on Ricochet.
By electing not to place herself on the cover of her album for the first time, Jordan has made a choice. She is aiming higher than just writing about herself. She is writing about discovery, patience and time, concepts that intertwine as endlessly inside all of us as the swirling shell on the albums cover. ‘Ricochet’ is absolutely drowning in infectious choruses and irresistible melodies. Each spin is as joyful as the last. Jordan may be anxious about the endless passing of time but, at the very least, with a record like ‘Ricochet’ she has managed to make passing that time just that bit more beautiful.
Ricochet is out now via Matador Records.
