Snail Mail’s Life Lessons 

They say your brain doesn’t fully develop until you’re 25. You reach a quarter century, and maybe you decide it’s not worth it to pull up to work hungover or to charge a bunch of bullshit to your credit card. 

No telling whether Lindsey Jordan’s had those specific revelations, but chatting with the Chronicle about her third album, last month’s Ricochet, she does share plenty other lessons she’s learned since releasing Lush, her critically acclaimed debut album, when she was 18. 

First of all, “People don’t really realize that you can just do whatever you want,” she says. “Everybody thinks that there’s a specific ladder that you have to follow, or you’re not growing. Just because you’re getting bigger, you don’t have to spend fucking $2 million at the fucking studio and work with the biggest producer you can find and get the Philharmonic on it.

“That’s just been a huge part of growing up and doing this,” Jordan continues. “Now I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Actually, some of the things that are really, really, really bad about it are kind of just the bed I made for myself.’ Because you just do what you think you’re supposed to do.” 

It took a lot to get here. Jordan followed 2018’s Lush with Valentine in 2021, then promptly underwent surgery to remove polyps from her vocal cords. The surgery unlocked an upper range the songwriter, known for her raw, raspy vocals, didn’t know she had, but it also left her completely silent for a month as she underwent intensive physical therapy. She’s since relearned how to talk completely, and picked up the formal vocal techniques and touring regimens necessary to ensure her voice doesn’t blow out on the road. 

“It’s so much more fun to play [now],” Jordan says. “I’ve always gotten in my head at shows, being like, ‘Is this how hard I’m supposed to be pushing? Should I be pushing harder? Should I be going lighter?’ I feel like having the formal training makes it less of a toss up.”

She thus reenters the music industry beast with a new focus on sustainability. “Everything, I think, is about longevity, and figuring out how to make it work for yourself,” Jordan says. “Or just failing.” 

Even her approach to songwriting endured an overhaul. On past records, she’d spend up to a year working on one track at a time, either tweaking it until it was perfect or deeming it unworthy of being recorded. It worked: Dripping with lovelorn poetry and brimming with earworming, Nineties-recalling guitar licks, both Lush and Valentine were named by multiple music publications as one of the best albums of their respective years. But the loss Jordan felt after throwing a song away after months was “devastating.” 

This time around, she wrote all of the music and vocal melodies for Ricochet at once, then filled in the instrumentals with lyrics later on. The resulting effort, more about existentialism and escape than fractured romance, is polished and cinematic – an ironic fate in Jordan’s eyes, since its recording was so relaxed. 

“I almost feel like we pared down,” she says of making the LP. “Even though I think everything is better than it’s ever sounded, and it sounds elegant and it sounds huge. But we did everything in even more of a chill way.” 

Indeed, Jordan and longtime friend Aron Kobayashi Ritch, bassist and producer for fellow distortion-loving young rockers Momma, did not spend millions in the studio, or tap a distinguished symphony for Ricochet’s prevalent string sections. Instead, after mapping out their exact intentions before entering the studio – Ritch’s “really not scammy” approach to recording taught Jordan another exercise in optimization, she says – the pals played pool and watched movies as much as they attempted to impress each other with guitar tones. Working with a peer, she realized, creates a more respectful, collaborative environment than enlisting a bigtime producer who might be phoning it in. 

And, she marvels, “Making a record totally can be fun. It’s crazy.” 

Snail Mail performs at Stubb’s on Sunday, April 26. 

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