Snail Mail is Lindsey Jordan, a determinedly independent songwriter from Maryland on the US east coast.
Snail Mail’s debut LP Lush appeared in numerous 2018 year-end lists, receiving top five honours from Pitchfork and Stereogum. Listeners have been equally drawn to Jordan’s emotionally descriptive indie rock, with tickets for her inaugural Australian tour selling out in a hurry.
It’s been an auspicious 12 months, but Jordan isn’t getting carried away.
“It’s really flattering, however I try to keep all forms of validation and criticism out of my mind when I’m trying to write,” she says. “I just think of it as a really personal experience and any outside forces change the way that I think about things. I just try to keep it all at a dull roar, not in my mind. It’s not something I really take to heart so much as just see and appreciate and try to ignore when I’m working.”
Snail Mail emerged in 2016 with the EP, Habit, released via Sister Polygon Records (the label run by D.C. punk band Priests). The six-track release caught the attention of New York indie bigwigs, Matador Records, who oversaw the release of Lush. Home to the likes of Cat Power, Kurt Vile and Interpol, Matador is one of indie rock’s most influential labels.
“They don’t really mess with me that much,” says Jordan of her relationship with the label. “The people who I work with are for the most part supportive and interested in providing me the resources I need to do what I need to do. Because I’m such an independent person, I’ve pushed away help and suggestions.
“I do like all the resources and all the access that I have through working with such great people, having so many outlets for what I want to get done. It’s really an interesting thing because there are a million people working for the Snail Mail LLC right now and when it comes down to it the real source of everything is just me alone in a room with my guitar. I try to just keep writing to what it originally was and I don’t try to do anything else with it.”
Jordan has quickly established a distinctive sound. The songs on Lush are characterised by her melodic and unrefined vocals, the jangly freedom of her guitar playing and her knack for throwing in unexpected chord changes.
“The style of the record and the record before it were pretty much just a result of me honing in on what I wanted to create and not really thinking about what it was going to turn out to be,” Jordan says. “Not really thinking about influences and not really thinking about ripping something off or if I was doing something original. I think I just had an idea to write a song and if it sounded right to me melodically and lyrically, it would just feel done.”
The lyrics on Lush are often intimately personal, but also broadly relatable. There are songs that focus on finding the courage to move on as well as examining one’s susceptibility to being led astray. There are also moments where Jordan sounds unafraid to express how over something she is, be it a person, a relationship or a feeling of self-pity.
“After I was done with it [the album] I had this thought where I was like, ‘there’s no way this is going to do well’. I thought it was so personal and representative of this direct narrative of things that happened in my life.
“I didn’t realise until people started coming up to me and being like ‘this really helped me’, or ‘this reminded me of my relationship’. I realised that in practice the songs are actually a lot more vague than I think of them as. People can put their own context to the situation.”
Snail Mail comes to Estonian House as part of Brunswick Music Festival on Friday March 8. She will play two shows, one at 6pm (sold out) and one at 9:30pm. Head to Handsome Tours for ticket details.
