This is a little bit of my conversation with Lindsey Jordan, who is Snail Mail. I’m going to throw a link to the whole thing at the end of our song. This is part of a larger conversation that we had. That is my opinion and I am sticking with it! I loved Snail Mail’s album “ Lush” last year and I was so thrilled that I got a chance to talk to her.
Snail Mail released what might have been the best album of 2018. Snail Mail picks “Winner’s Blues” by Sonic Youth Whether you come for the explosive pop choruses, the cathartic heartbreak poetry or the nimble fingerpicked finery, her ability and the advancement of her craft in the three years since that debut album is undeniable. It feels like the crux of the whole album, and we’re left to reflect on how much life experience Lindsey Jordan has packed into the past three years, and the range of shades this inspiring guitarist is able to paint with. Perhaps finest of all is the closing track Mia, the warm glow of valves embraced by stately strings as Jordan addresses her muse, intoning sorrowfully “Isn’t it strange, the way it’s just over? Mia, don’t cry, I love you forever, but I gotta grow up now.” “Even with a job that keeps me moving, most days I just wanna lie down, Sleep it away til it’s nothing and pull the blinds all the way down,” Jordan sings, finding a universal theme in the darkest of recollections. et al., was the product of a year’s perfectionism and it’s soaked with the cloying weight of depression. The first, Light Blue, is ridiculously lovely, Jordan pirouetting dextrously through a refined pattern, highlighted by dreamy piano flecks and the doleful whir of a cello as she lays bare her devotion: “I wanna wake up early everyday just to be awake in the same world as you.” The next, c. All three are stunning, yet they nearly didn’t make the final cut, with Cook having to fight to keep them from the studio bin. Jordan is a classically trained player who took up guitar at the age of six, and Valentine is at its most compelling and hard-hitting on the trio of ornate fingerpicked folk songs that are dotted through the album. Kept perfectly succinct, the song finishes abruptly on a chord rich with unresolved suspense and a swirl of strings. Glory chugs along on overdriven alt-rock chords for a little over two minutes, revealing the album’s only guitar solo, nine bars of well-phrased ascending excellence. The slow, smoky Forever (Sailing) borrows from Swedish disco artist Madleen Kane’s You And I, Jordan ruefully observing “Nothing stays as good as it starts”, while Madonna is scattered with deft, refulgent riffing and angsty self-reflection as she admits: “I consecrate my life to kneeling at your altar, My second sin of seven being: wanting more”. One minute, she’s evoking the spirit of Elliott Smith, the next driving hard into a chorus reminiscent of Avril Lavigne or contemporaries such as Soccer Mommy and Beabadoobee.Ī pair of bruised pop anthems follow.
They reference her return from relentless touring commitments and a 45-day period she spent in an Arizona rehab facility.īuilding on the wholly infectious hook-packed grunge-pop that earned Jordan a place on the same Matador label as Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, album two is even more tightly-honed, with the young guitarist deploying an impressive range of tones. The 10 songs on Valentine were entirely self-written over the winter of 2019-20, something the 22-year-old is fiercely proud of in an era when ghost writers proliferate in the pop world.
She returns with a whole load of fresh perspective after a period of huge personal growth in which she had to grow up fast.
The Maryland guitarist was only 18 when she made debut album Lush, described by Rolling Stone as “the work of an indie-rock prodigy”. Life has moved fast for Lindsey Jordan in the last three years – way faster than her band name might suggest.