We all have different events or cultural touchstones that help us mark time. Sometimes, the rapid pace at which the years slip by, like grains of sand forcing their way to the bottom of an hourglass, can send shockwaves through your system. I had a moment like that recently when revisiting Snail Mail’s 2016 debut EP Habit, an introduction as striking as its bold crimson cover, in preparation for her first album in five years. A decade later, life has come fast and hard at Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan. From signing to Matador in her mid-teens, touring with the likes of Waxahatchee and Mac DeMarco, releasing critically acclaimed records in Lush and Valentine, and even starring as a sort of Buffy the Vampire stand-in in the psychological thriller, I Saw The TV Glow. With those highs, there were challenges, notably suffering from enlarged polyps on her vocal cords, forcing her to cancel the Valentine tour to seek treatment and recover properly to avoid inflicting permanent damage on her voice.

Time– the passing of it, a nostalgia for simpler periods set in the suburbs, a curiosity for what’s around the corner and concerns rooted in not knowing how much time is left in our lives – is one of Ricochet’s grounding forces. In “Tractor Beams”, the ‘90s rock-pop inflected opening track, Jordan optimistically intones, “The future looks so bright.” The airiness of the arrangement, bolstered by the sweep of dramatic strings, introduces a new recurring textural component that confidently drives Snail Mail’s sound in a stunning direction. It’s an enveloping moment of self-assurance, lyrically and musically, that presents a somewhat false narrative to this excellent body of work. From there, the next song, in fact, Jordan is consumed by the corners of mortality as she posits, “Waitin’ round to die / To see what happens after,” against “My Maker’s” acoustic-guitar-led introspection. Lyrically, Ricochet contains some of Jordan’s most profound theses on life, death, recovering from pain and holding onto hope. The dense subject matter is complemented by an equally compelling sonic palette evoking the likes of Radiohead, Avril Lavigne, REM and Nirvana. Still only 26, Lindsey Jordan proves time and again with each new venture, be it within music, entering the world of film or making dreams of hosting a festival a reality, just how astute and artistically charged she is.

Lindsey Jordan joined Northern Transmissions via Zoom, sitting on her porch in North Carolina, busying her hands with her latest pottery project, discussing Snail Mail’s long-awaited third LP Ricochet.

Northern Transmissions: Hey Lindsey, how’s your day going? You’re in North Carolina, right?

Lindsey Jordan: Yeah, I’m in North Carolina. I’m having a nice day. While I’ve been doing press for this album, I’ve been sculpting different pieces from clay. Right now, I’m making a box. Usually, I make ashtrays, but this is just a box! I’m trying to make the bottom of this thing. I’m on attempt number two today. It’s nice to have something else to focus on while talking about these songs and this period because sometimes I feel like I’m not making sense anymore!

NT: Well, the box looks great. I’m excited to speak with you about your new record, Ricochet. I’ve been a fan of your music for, and I can’t believe as much time has passed, 10 years. I was even surprised that it’s been 5 years since Valentine was released. I’d love to hear what reflections you’ve had on your career over the last decade of Snail Mail. How has that time been?

Lindsey Jordan: It’s been good. As you’re saying that, I’m realizing that [Ricochet] is my existential record and I think part of that came from having time to reflect. We tour really hard on every album; I’m extremely grateful for that, and that we can go for as long as we can each time. Usually, by the time an album-era is over, I feel like a completely different person. At this time, it’s better than ever, in some ways. I’ve made a lot of mistakes with how I like to get things done, or how I like to run stuff, and have been able to try so many different things because we’ve been around for so long. I’m so happy that I’m still only 26-years-old and on record three. I feel like this one, not that it sounds like the first one, but I feel like I’ve gotten really good at doing things well for myself. With this record, it definitely feels like I’m hitting my stride as far as changing it up for myself in ways that I haven’t before. I definitely feel that writing and recording it was enjoyable in ways where there’s usually stress or a different vibe.

NT: From a lyrical point of view, there’s great depth to the self-examination as well as reflections on growing up in the suburbs and, perhaps, missing the anonymity of that part of your life. I was curious if there was a song from an earlier Snail Mail record that you feel was particularly important in the evolution of your songwriting that helped you be more vulnerable or unfiltered in your work, especially on Ricochet.

Lindsey Jordan: I guess “Headlock.” With that one, I was stepping into more imagery-based stuff that I continued to bounce off on this one. “Automate,” would be another one. There’s a favorite song from each record, but that’s one of my favourite Snail Mail songs. The second half, when the time signature changes, definitely made me feel more musically excited and experimental. There’s a good amount of that on this record, form-wise. Honestly, with the oldest Snail Mail stuff, looking back at how much imagery there was in it, I was yearning to get back to building more imagery and really intensify it and make it mean more to me. Whereas, when I was writing Habit, or Lush, even, it all meant something to me, but I feel like I’ve gotten a lot further in my lyricism, where I can pick imagery and make it more. I was definitely trying to, not fully get back to that place, but land somewhere similar to where I was starting with the Habit material.

Everything else has been a conscious effort. This record has been such a conscious effort for me to try to expand. Similarly with Valentine, for me, I needed to do that. I needed to have this big, emotional, outpouring, theatrical, glamorous record! However, I knew by the time it was done that no matter what was going on in my life, for the next record, I wanted to try things differently. I was definitely trying to imbue it with a broader range of emotion. In the old songs, I feel like I did a lot of getting mad at things that are outward. Ricochet, however, is a good mix of outward anger and inward anger. There are things that I’m angry about that are outward: the music industry or how people treat each other. I’m pushing a lot of it onto myself on the record. I’m also talking to myself as a teenager on it.

NT: The last five years have held so many highs and lows for you. You expanded your sound, starred in I Saw The TV Glow, but then you also suffered with polyps on your vocal cords and underwent treatment and recovery for that. You mentioned channelling inward and outward anger on your new record. Going through all of those things in recent years, was making music something you were excited to do to unpack everything and grow from those experiences?

Lindsey Jordan: A lot of stuff I’ve done before this has been more confessional. The big difference about it is that it doesn’t feel as cathartic. The thing with it not feeling as cathartic as the other records is that a lot of the big universal topics I’m talking about on these songs– death and the meaning of life shit –were things I wanted to get into and talk about for a very long time, but I felt that I had to be very careful about how I approached them as a narrator. I’m in this pretty jaded couple of years of my life right now, so it’s hard for me to get myself out of the dumps about a lot of things. However, I didn’t want to create jaded art. I also didn’t want to come off like some religious expert or sage who thinks I know better than everybody else who, for millions of years, have been trying to figure this stuff out. In trying so hard to deliver a message, I did less inner work than usual, I guess. It felt less like an exercise of getting something out and more like putting something out, if that makes sense.

It’s been cathartic talking about it in interviews. There was a lot of stuff that I used to not be able to talk about without tearing up. Now, I’m a bit more open to it. There’s a whole thing there, and it has been a lot to chew on. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten any further in figuring anything out, but it’s nice to talk about it. More than anything, it’s been a problem because the death thing has been an OCD obsession for me for a long time, but it’s not something I externalize. Years ago, I had a therapist, and she would always just be like, ‘Well, girl, we’re all scared of death,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, so this doesn’t work here.’ Then, you know, people in my life are experiencing it, at any given moment, and have even closer relationships to death than me where they lose someone close to them. I’m not going to be like, ‘I’ve been really worried about this’ when they have those experiences. Talking about it in the lyrics and in interviews has been pretty cathartic. Then, at the same time, I’ll say also, there are little bits that I can’t help but leak. Also, I didn’t want to do any love songs on this record, and there are two on there! I had to have them on there because they were in relation to what I’m talking about. I can’t completely filter how I feel, but I did feel like I had to be really careful with topics that people have so much personal experience with.

NT: That’s really interesting. With that, I imagine there’s a responsibility to the listener by not presenting something that’s jarring or ignorant in how you approach that topic.

Lindsey Jordan: Yeah, totally. Basically, I wrote everything backwards. Or, I flipped my process on its head in a way that I’d never done before. Usually, I’ll work on one song at a time, sometimes for up to six months, sometimes more. Even then, there’s about a 70% chance it won’t make it onto the record. That’s how I used to work! Thankfully, I’ve gotten better. But yeah, I would just work on it intensely to the point where that’s all I focused on and then get to a point where I’d be like, ‘Okay, either I can make something of this or I can’t’.

For the most part, I would discard everything and never want to look at it again. This time, I reached a point where I’ve thrown away so many months, and months, and months of hard work in the past. I knew I had to find a way to save more stuff. Whenever I look back at the discarded stuff, if I have the heart to look back eventually, it’s actually usually pretty good. I may have just had an unclear view. This time, I was trying to do my normal writing routine, which started while we were touring Valentine. I realized I was inspired to write riffs, melodies and chord progressions. I was coming up with a lot over a couple of years, and I decided that I would wait to do all the lyrics at the same time. I’d work on all of these pieces of songs that I had at the same time. Eventually, I had 11 finished instrumental tracks, not produced, but had written an intro, bridge, or guitar solo, and vocal melodies that I wrote down to the tee, where I could just fill in the syllable count. More than that, I was like, ‘Now I don’t have to worry about coming up with music. I can take this year to figure out what the record’s actually gonna be.’ From there, I did all of the lyrics at the same time. That was really cool because with the music I was able to Frankenstein stuff. It made me think that having every element, or working on it at the same time, maybe doesn’t work. Or, that something could be a vocal melody for a pre-chorus, but it might also work as a guitar solo in the bridge, stuff like that.

With the lyrics, it was the same thing. I was trying to do a universe-building thing. As soon as I finished touring Valentine and moved into this house, I was like, ‘Okay, now I can do this. Now I’ll do the lyrical side of creating the album.’ I was basically able to mix and match images and stuff because it was all more of a world-building exercise, where I was like, ‘I want to include the swamp monster, but it could be in “Hell” or it also could be an “Agony Freak”. It was more of a cool writing exercise experience that I hadn’t had before. Having a lot at once made it a lot easier for me to keep my head clear, and I didn’t get rid of any of the songs. It worked really well for me. Nothing got discarded, everything got worked through.

NT: That’s so interesting. You worked with Aron Kobayashi Ritch, who produced Ricochet with you. I loved the production of the album. Sonically, it’s fun, it’s big, and you incorporate so many great new elements to Snail Mail’s foundation. Did you have specific reference points when making these songs? What were some of the things you were excited to experiment with?

Lindsey Jordan: I became friends with Aron probably three years ago, when we toured with Momma and we became really close. He’s worked on a lot of things for friends of mine and up-and-coming bands in New York, and he’s just a really good listener. He’s a really good friend. He’s really talented, and I got to a point where I realized that he’s really good at applying people’s visions to his work, which sounds like something any producer should be able to do, but they really can’t. I feel like a lot of producers just put their producer thing on your work. Whereas, he’s really good at being like, ‘Oh, you want this? Okay. Here’s this,’ you know?

We had a collaborative playlist that we made together, which we had worked on for years. We would just meet up and talk. We both love Imogen Heap and Frou Frou and a lot of trip-hop stuff. We also both love Avril Lavigne, The Sundays, Juliana Hatfield, Pinback, but it was a blast working with him. He knows me really well. I feel like my new mantra for people is that you should work with people who know you really well. He has been listening to Snail Mail since he was a young teenager. He’s watched it come up, and he knows me really well. And I’m like, ‘I’m just curious, what do you want to see out of Snail Mail? What do you want to see out of me?’ In that way, as well, he was really good at making my dream come true, vision-wise.

NT: Finally, what lyric from Ricochet do you feel embodies the feeling of it and what you wanted to convey in its message?

Lindsey Jordan: Oh, there are a few that I think are really good-meaning statements. Lyrically, for me, “Reverie” is my favorite lyrical thing I’ve ever done. I like it as the ending of the album because it’s exactly where I’m at. What comes to mind is when I sing, “Big shot! Who cares? / If loved is all we’ll ever be, / Then we’ll bask in our reverie / With hands up in the air / And we’ll bask in our reverie /With hands up in the air.”

Pre-order Ricochet by Snail Mail HERE