Ten years after debuting in 2016 with the lo-fi EP Habit, Snail Mail, a solo project for guitarist, singer, songwriter Lindsey Jordan, has released Ricochet. At a little over 41 minutes and full to the brim with layers of guitar, percussive elements, and strings, Ricochet is Jordan’s longest and most ambitious record to date, as distant from Habit, in some ways, as a record can get, though one still hears the basic three-piece band framework on which Habit and 2018’s Lush were built.
Jordan has gained greater control over the petulant edge of her voice, which had gathered an exhausted-sounding grit by the time she recorded 2021’s Valentine, with its synths, electronic flourishes, and messy guitar riffs. As a follow-up to that record, it’s possible to hear Jordan’s electric rhythm guitar on the opening bars of Ricochet’s first track, “Tractor Beam,” as a return to form. But as the drum track emerges from the blanket it was under and layers of guitars fill in the speakers, it becomes apparent that Jordan, with the help of producer Aron Kobayashi Ritch, is staking her claim in yet another piece of sonic territory.
“Tractor Beam” signals an album that, in many ways, is a love letter to the alt-rock sound of the late 90s and early 00s. At various points, one recalls Avril Lavigne, Liz Phair, and others from the time when songwriters wrote about relationships and breakups as if they had metaphysical consequences. You can hear the epic strains of the era as Jordan tries to marshal recurring themes of isolation and loneliness into a broader concern with death. “I just developed . . . a debilitating fear of death,” Jordan says of writing the songs for Ricochet, “and I wanted to write about it, but I wasn’t sure . . . what perspective to take as the narrator.”
What emerged in the process was an attempt to push beyond the reach of older material as she wrote about death from various angles. It’s a subject and a process that has all the potential for aimless philosophizing or morbid wallowing. Thankfully, Ricochet does neither of these. In fact, it’s probably the least depressive album Snail Mail has put out. Jordan’s quirky poetic eye seems determined to normalize the scary and demystify the revelatory, even as her music fills in an emotive, sometimes sweeping, soundscape.
“I wanna fly a plane to Heaven,” Jordan sings in “My Maker,” “Tarry at the airport bar.” This is emblematic of Jordan’s poetic style: a grandiose statement paired with ironic undercutting. “Battalions of angels/ Marching from on high,” she sings over the dual strumming of acoustic and electric guitars, a bowed bass line, and a synth part that swirls for attention, “Say, ‘Above us, it’s just sky.’” “My Maker” also seems emblematic of Jordan’s dilemma: Cast-off assumptions of a Catholic upbringing troubled by the anxieties of, well, a Catholic upbringing.
It’s hard to know which gains the upper hand on Ricochet, the assumptions, the anxieties, or some kind of resolution of the two. “Oh, bouncer in the sky,” she sings near the beginning of “Hell,” which channels The Cranberries, “Let me in, I’m scared to die.” The fear of death is as inevitable as death itself, but Jordan seems less concerned with forming a dogma than with exploring the emotional terrain in light of the ultimate outcome.
One of the brilliant things about Ricochet is that the main theme doesn’t overwhelm you. Other themes take the foreground. The durability of relationships over time is a big one. The delicate “Light on Our Feet,” with its arpeggiated guitar and cushion of strings, seems to ponder the inevitable end of a relationship, while the grungy “Dead End” recalls bygone days of adolescence (though not quite as bygone for the 26-year-old Jordan as they are for some of us) through the lens of a lost friendship.
On the melancholic masterpiece “Cruise,” which employs a piano and brass choir, Jordan sings a stately plea to understand the nature of isolation, the desire to “slip away” from life-affirming moments. And the introspective “Agony Freak” seems to delve into the writer’s own obsession with misery. “I try to feed it, but it just wants more,” she sings. Given the album’s intention, there’s something meta about the song’s image of a monster taking her over and “wearing my skin.” A clue that you’re listening to a forty-minute-long attempt to separate the two.Ricochet is a triumph for Snail Mail, not just because of the lyrical territory she delves into, but because of the music that sustains it. From the brief but memorable alteration of melody at the end of “Tractor Beam” to the sudden descent to half-time on the searching and climactic “Butterfly” (easily the best track), Ricochet is an irresistible album full of simple but effective song-craft decisions that add up to a next-level moment for the artist.
