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.

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