‘Valentine’ shatters and spellbinds listeners
Snail Mail, the name of 22-year-old Lindsey Jordan’s acclaimed indie rock project, makes music that smashes your heart into thousands of tiny pieces while, simultaneously and tenderly, mending it back together.
Jordan’s sophomore studio album, the beautifully arranged “Valentine,” sees her confidently showcase her newfound maturity in both intimate and arena-sized sounds. She reflects upon her past relationships with the grace, nuance and emotional complexity of someone several times her age in a concise, 32-minute record and finds transcendent strength in the anguish that consumes several of these tracks.
Written between 2019 and 2020 after Jordan toured her immensely successful debut studio album “Lush”— a runaway hit that established her as a voice of her generation and an innovator within the indie rock sphere — “Valentine” sees a young woman grappling with the effects of newfound fame and struggling to maintain stability in the wake of shattered love and ensuing isolation. Although heartbreak and youthful sensitivity and realization play a key role in “Valentine’s” lyrical content, much like her debut, this record sees Jordan charting new territory and touching on her time in rehab and addiction recovery.
The wistfulness and teenage exuberance that defined parts of “Lush” are transformed into something radical and candid. Album opener, title track and lead single “Valentine” opens with Jordan asking the object of her desire: “Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop and stare at you?” The ugly nature of love and celebrity becomes the record’s recurring motif that signifies the lived experiences of an adult Jordan navigating her early twenties.
The album’s second single and likely its grooviest cut, “Ben Franklin,” features Jordan adopting a braggadocious indifference toward heartbreak in order to numb her hurt over one of this year’s slickest and deepest basslines. The infectious bass and synth lines here underscore Jordan’s coolheadedness, even if she admits it’s a painfully constructed facade, as she sings “All on my own, guess the shit just makes you boring / Got money, I don’t care about sex / You knew how I’d take it, you brought her to flex.”
On the same song, Jordan bares what is perhaps one of her most emotionally-wrenching confessions: “Moved on, but nothing feels true / Sometimes I hate her just for not being you / Post-rehab, I’ve been feeling so small / I miss your attention, I wish I could call.” The bitterness and torment that marks the majority of this album are best encapsulated in this verse, with Jordan attempting to reconcile her tumultuous past with what looks like an unstable future. The heart and wide-eyedness found across “Lush” is buried deep beneath complex reckonings with adulthood and crumbling relationships, enhancing Jordan’s apparent musical and lyrical ingenuity.
Perhaps what lends the most depth to “Valentine” is the many different ways Jordan translates and expresses multi-dimensional heartbreak across the 10 tracks. Whether it be turning to alcohol “just to taste her mouth” on “Headlock,” admitting to an ex-lover that “You owe me / You own me” on “Glory” or crooning over gently-plucked guitar and strings “I love you forever / But I’ve gotta grow up now / No, I can’t keep holding on to you anymore / Mia, I’m still yours” on the titular “Mia,” Jordan conveys the paradoxical nature of infatuation and its mind-boggling effects with a level of wisdom that puts her contemporaries to shame.
The push and pull of fully separating oneself from former love, the unstoppable allure of returning to it and all of its associated emotions are explored with such cutting precision that you can hear it in the ebb and flow of Jordan’s voice and tone throughout the album.
Jordan is at her most lyrically unbound and adventurous on the stunning album highlight “Light Blue,” the record’s only true love song, as well as its most liberating. Drifting over gorgeous acoustic guitar and piano keys, Jordan reaches into her upper register as she proclaims “Nothing’s gonna stop me now / Nothing’s gonna stop me now, now, now, now.” The song’s ode to “the ocean blue” evokes an exquisite portrait of Jordan standing on the bow of a sailboat raging against the wind, fully allowing herself to be embraced in the arms of rapturous love, even if it means potentially suffering in the process or in its aftermath. On top of this, it provides a wonderful segue into the following track, “Forever (Sailing),” using the motif of sailing to a similarly admirable lyrical effect.
The album shows nothing except Jordan’s complete mastery over her artistic vision and musical prowess on “Valentine.” It is easily one of this year’s most exciting albums and a deeply satisfying effort from one of indie rock’s most talented upcoming acts. Her examination of her own heartbreak and self-destructive tendencies and the proceeding road of emotional recovery illuminates her awe-inspiring maturity and growth. Jordan is way ahead of the pack and “Valentine” packs the musical punch to prove just that.