While previous Snail Mail releases embodied the perspective of teenage malaise and trudging around the suburbs with dreams of escaping them, ‘Valentine’ subtly touches upon the ways that Jordan’s life has shifted since her debut album changed her life. On the exceedingly personal and synth-laden ‘Ben Franklin’, which references the singer’s stay in a rehabilitation facility in its second verse, Jordan counters this vulnerability with a frayed growl: “Sucker for the pain, huh, honey?” It deftly shifts from the hushed folksy delivery of ‘c.et.al’ to the desperate plea which bursts out of ‘Valentine’s soft-focus beginnings ( “so why you wanna erase me?” she cries). While Jordan’s voice has often been the highlight of past Snail Mail releases, there’s a clear progression in the power and expression of her vocal here.
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While Kane’s ‘You and I’ felt full with hope that love could prevail over the stormiest of seas, Jordan’s reworking weathers more uncertain waters. Its centrepiece, the stand-out track ‘Forever (Sailing)’, utilises sampling with magical results by borrowing its swooning chorus melody, hissing percussion and title from the Swedish disco singer Madleen Kane.
But instead of attempting to rehash the sound of her debut, Snail Mail’s follow-up ‘Valentine’ embraces a rich palette of warm synthesisers, longing orchestral hums and gravelling folk. Paired with precise, spare and clean-sounding guitars, ‘Lush’s emotional astuteness also made it a pretty formidable record to improve upon. READ MORE: Snail Mail: “It’s awesome seeing lots of women and queer people in music”.As Snail Mail puts it on her ‘Valentine’ track ‘Forever (Sailing)’: “Time tends to pass and make a joke of things.” It’s an understandable impulse: perhaps the strangest part of healing is the discovery that somebody who was once your everything will eventually become nothing more than a passing shrug. And, more than anything on ‘Lush’, Jordan seemed to understand the urge to cling onto raw grief and live within it forever. On the immaculate ‘Pristine’, for instance, Lindsey Jordan vowed to never love anybody else again, declaring: “I’ll still see you in everything”. With her 2018 debut album ‘Lush’ Snail Mail perfectly captured the feeling of having your heart being bashed to pieces and ceremoniously stamped on, as well as acknowledging the melodrama of believing that the hurt will last forever.
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