»You can’t find anyone else like me,« sings Lindsey Jordan, aka Snail Mail, in the bittersweet bridge of her new album opener »Tractor Beam«. To pull out another super-hook after only a few minutes is one of Jordan’s great strengths – and she is right: when she first appeared in 2018 with her near-perfect debut Lush and revived our teenage hearts with crystal-clear bubblegum melodies, a host of acts followed who tried to capture a similar mood. But no one did so as convincingly as Snail Mail, who in a sense became the – still ultra-young – patron saint of this wave of guitar-led heart-spillers. And she has remained so.
A great deal has happened since her debut. Even her second album, Valentine, revolved around an existential narrative – Jordan had just come out of rehab at the time. The new record Ricochet, too, is marked by a difficult experience: she was diagnosed with vocal cord polyps and had to learn to speak, and therefore to sing, all over again. Her voice does indeed sound different now than it once did – though by no means so different as to be unrecognisable.
Even so, a sense of new beginning runs through the album: »I can’t remember who I was before,« she sings on the elegant highlight »Agony Freak«. Snail Mail preserves the strongest aspects of her music while opening it out towards new facets: »Light On Our Feet« charms through its easefulness, while brass appears at the end of »Cruise«. Jordan sounds more mature – and proves that she can write great songs well beyond the realm of teenage feeling.
Ricochet
