Getting Back on the Horse

Alright, it’s been a little while, my bad. Work got crazy, I went to Arizona for a travel flag football tournament and I just completely fell off the horse, but I’m trying to get my head back in the game…slowly. Luckily a favorite has returned so I talked about it.

Here’s a radio show:

Snail Mail is one of those artists that I came across in the most perfect way so her entire career will probably sound good to me. It was a chilly January night in Montreal where some trendy post-punk band were headlining a small bar and I heard Lindsey Jordan sing for approximately 8 seconds and was like “she’s going to be huge.” She played SXSW a few months later and now, she’s huge.

Just a perfect songwriter—very much feelings forward with piercing, direct lyrics like “untraced by the world outside you.” The music isn’t really “catchy” per say. There aren’t that many memorable choruses and hooks, but moments stick with you as anthemic. When the guitar clicks into gear during “Speaking Terms” or that crazy second guitar lead in “Heatwave.” It’s also incredible to refer to your exes as “the perfect one” or “the one with green eyes” on your debut record, just immaculate stuff all around.

I was nervous in the verse of this new single. You can functionally reduce every song she’s ever written to the guitar part and the singing part (that’s why the Habit EP is so good even though Jordan herself cringes at all the bass parts). The way those lilting vocals and mile-wide guitar strummers can kick you in the gut and drive her songs into the stratosphere is endlessly effecting. It’s rare that you get such a double edged songwriter that’s so aware of how these abilities can compliment one another, but Jordan gets it.

After the “pivot to synths” tease in the beginning, the explosion inevitably comes and the song instantly becomes recognizably Snail Mail. She’s belting, she’s shredding. She’s longing for someone who she can’t have and I’m feeling it. In a way it feels like she just melted together the two sides of her first record. Lush has a relatively stark division between the somber tunes and the home run balls. This song bounds between those zones in one turn of phrase.

The other single just came out yesterday and it’s just as good. It’s missing a real signature guitar part, but I dig the confidence. Her voice sits smoothly in the swaggering beat. “Sucker for the pain, huh honey?” What a perfect question. Rather than blending the sonic contrast of Lush, here the lyrics are combined. It’s not so much of a kiss off or an exercise in longing. Here, she’s the villain and the hero. These are the signs of a maturing artist. Hers songs are knottier and more complex, and still recognizably hers.

-Donovan Burtan