Last night, Snail Mail — the project of Lindsey Jordan — debuted her new single, ‘Tractor Beam’ on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. The lush and layered performance was for her album opener which is available now, everywhere. Snail Mail’s highly anticipated third album, Ricochet, lands this Friday, March 27 on Matador Records.
Snail Mail: ‘Tractor Beam’ | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
Lindsey Jordan on ‘Tractor Beam’
Prior to ‘Tractor Beam,’ she’s released two other singles- ‘My Maker,’ and the album’s first single, ‘Dead End,’ a standout that mourns the simplicity of a suburban adolescence, of parking in a cul-de-sac and smoking with friends. Sonically the song pairs a wall of grunge-gaze textures with a piercing lead guitar riff for which The New York Times praised its “grungy, thickly layered guitars and leaping melody lines.”
On her first album in five years, she returns with a renewed sense of clarity and control, asserting herself as a generational songwriter with a sharpened perspective. While her early work chronicled the emotional turbulence of young love, Ricochet reveals a deeper fixation: time, mortality, and the quiet terror of watching the things you love slip away. The album’s 11 songs are steeped in introspection, anxiety, and acceptance — an acknowledgment that the world keeps turning regardless of what’s unfolding in your own small orbit. Fans can pre-order Ricochet HERE
Written during a period of intense personal change that included a move to North Carolina from NYC, Ricochet finds Jordan reckoning with questions she once avoided, namely death and what comes after. The album pairs her incisive lyricism with newly expansive melodies, ornate string arrangements, and hypnotic textures, marking a natural evolution from Lush’s poised guitar work and Valentine’s raw emotional charge. Sonically, Ricochet channels the luminous side of ’90s alternative rock — echoing Smashing Pumpkins at their sunniest, Radiohead at their most Britpop, and the shoegaze haze of bands like Catherine Wheel and Ivy — all filtered through Jordan’s singular voice.
After undergoing surgery for vocal polyps and intensive speech therapy ahead of 2021’s Valentine tour, Jordan emerges on Ricochet as a more confident and controlled vocalist — an ironic strength for an album centered on uncertainty. She recorded the album with producer and bassist Aron Kobayashi Ritch (Momma) at Fidelitorium Recordings in North Carolina, as well as Nightfly and Studio G in Brooklyn. The sessions, Jordan says, felt “refreshing, trusting, and comfortable,” allowing her to fully inhabit the songs without compromise.
The album also marks a departure in Jordan’s creative process. “I’ve never done this before, but I wrote all of the instrumentals and vocal melodies on the piano or guitar, and then I filled in the lyrics all at once over a year,” she explains. This shift gave her more time to craft the expansive melodies that define Ricochet‘s sound
The album’s lyrical world is informed by art that grapples with existence itself. Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York looms large, while tracks like ‘Nowhere’ draw inspiration from Laura Gilpin’s poem ‘The Two-Headed Calf.’ Elsewhere, Ricochet mourns fading friendships, lost simplicity, and the ache of emotional distance — a record about being anxious not over the bad, but over how fleeting the good can be.
The album’s artwork mirrors its themes. Ricochet is the first Snail Mail release not to feature Jordan’s face; instead, a spiral shell floats in a distressed blue expanse, symbolising both inward collapse and outward infinity — the push and pull of growth, distance, and perspective.
Praise for Ricochet
“Equal parts diarist and poet, Jordan is uniquely able to express the feeling of ache…Ricochet comes out like a sigh. It expresses the resigned feeling that life, and pain, inevitably drags on.” – The FADER
“Ricochet is for the introspective, the emotional, and perhaps even the anxiety-ridden pop-music fan.” – NYLON
“It’s giving off some major mid-’90s alt-rock vibes” – Stereogum
“Light and jangly pop-rock confection that masks heavy lyrics about mortality.” – Genius
“With a powerful lead guitar, a grunge aesthetic, and tense, reflective hooks, it invokes the nostalgia of childhood years to great effect.” – Consequence
“One of the finest indie-rock composers of the past decade” – Boston.com
Snail Mail
Ricochet
Pre-order Ricochet HERE
Tracklisting
- Tractor Beam
- My Maker
- Light On Our Feet
- Cruise
- Agony Freak
- Dead End
- Butterfly
- Nowhere
- Hell
- Ricochet
- Reverie
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