SNAIL MAIL - RICOCHET - MATADOR

Snail Mail - the project of Lindsey Jordan - debuted her new single, “Tractor Beam” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Out now, it’s the opening track from her hugely-anticipated third record, Ricochet, which releases Friday, March 27, via Matador. The LP was co-produced by Jordan, alongside Aron Kobayashi Ritch (Momma). On the single Jordan’s anthemic vocal is paired with buoyant, jangling guitar leads and soaring strings courtesy of NYC’s Metropolis Ensemble. She shares, “I wanted the first song on ‘Ricochet’ to be somewhat hopeful, while also balancing some of the heavier themes of the record. I got inspired by Gregg Araki’s adaptation of Mysterious Skin and the use of alien abduction as a metaphor for lost time because of disassociation.”  

The official video for “Tractor Beam,” shot on a New Jersey sheep farm, brings the emotional undercurrent of the song into a more surreal, playful world. It features Jordan gallivanting among a cast of animals, leaning into the album’s visual language with a sense of lightness and charm. The setting also ties directly into the two-headed lamb motif seen throughout the project - an image that extended beyond the screen, with the lamb appearing alongside her on The Tonight Show stage. 

Prior to “Tractor Beam,” Snail Mail 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.”

Jordan will soon head out on a major North American tour this spring, kicking off April 10 in Milwaukee and running through early May. The tour will mark Snail Mail’s first extensive run of North America in support of Ricochet and they will make stops at Brooklyn Paramount in Brooklyn on April 15 and Los Angeles’ The Wiltern on May 1. The tour picks back up June 18 with dates in Europe and The UK followed by a slot at Fuji Rock Festival in Japan on July 24.

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. 

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, symbolizing both inward collapse and outward infinity — the push and pull of growth, distance, and perspective.