Ricochet

Snail Mail — 2026

“Polished, patient, and searching for something deeper.”

Lindsey Jordan started making music as Snail Mail when she was barely a teenager, recording her debut EP Habit at 16 out of her bedroom in Maryland. Her 2018 full-length Lush put her on the map as one of indie rock’s most promising young writers, and 2021’s Valentine confirmed she was the real deal. Then life happened. Jordan was diagnosed with vocal cord polyps right before touring Valentine, had surgery, spent months in speech therapy, moved out of New York to Greensboro, North Carolina. Five years later, she’s back with Ricochet, her third record and it’s a different kind of Snail Mail album. The heartbreak and romantic anguish that powered those earlier records are largely gone. Instead, Jordan is asking bigger, quieter questions about what life means, what it feels like to lose track of people you care about, and what it means to get older and not really know what you’re doing. It’s a slower record than some fans might expect, but there’s true substance behind the restraint.

Ricochet pulls from a pretty clear set of influences, and Jordan doesn’t try to hide them. You hear jangly 90s guitar pop, some grunge around the edges, shoegaze texture, and moments of sweeping string arrangements that push things in a more cinematic direction. With this expansion you will hear brass choirs, grand string arrangements, and piano. Songs like “Tractor Beam” lead with chiming, bouncy guitar work that sits somewhere between power pop and early Radiohead. “Dead End” leans harder into a wall of guitar noise with a sharper lead riff cutting through. Then something like “Light On Our Feet” strips nearly everything back and lets the vocals carry it. I think a midtempo indie record is accurate, and it’s both a strength and, at times, a limitation. The record rarely picks up speed, and a few songs in the middle section feel like they’re hovering rather than landing somewhere.

The most obvious change here isn’t the songwriting, it’s Jordan’s voice. After her vocal surgery and months of therapy, she came back with noticeably more range and control. The adolescent rasp of her 2018 debut Lush is gone, and she re-emerges with a wider range and a smoothed-out soprano. The rawness that made early songs feel so immediate has been traded for something more polished and assured. Beyond the vocals, the approach to arranging these songs is new too. Jordan wrote all the instrumentals and melodies first, then went back and filled in the lyrics separately. The content and seriousness of this album is the real shift in what Snail Mail is today compared to where she came from.

If you like Ricochet, you’ll probably also enjoy The Sundays, Liz Phair, Soccer Mommy, Best Coast, Julien Baker, and Japanese Breakfast. The power-pop of “Tractor Beam” and the guitar-forward “Dead End” hit all things indie rock with Cherry Glazerr and Bully coming to mind. The track “Hell” channels a more modern indie rock vibe like Momma or Beach Bunny in a pretty direct way. I think fans of Lucy Dacus would also connect with this record too, given the shared interest in writing about time passing and figuring out who you are once the early drama settles down.

“Dead End” is the album’s best argument for what Snail Mail does well. It’s the most focused and immediate song on the record, building through its verse to a chorus that hits hard without overselling itself. “My Maker” is the emotional anchor of the record. Jordan imagines flying a plane to heaven and lingering too long at the airport bar. “Tractor Beam” is a strong opener and super catchy that sets the tone well without tipping its hand completely. “Hell” is the album’s most direct moment, where Jordan just comes out and says she’s scared of dying and doesn’t know what to make of that.

Jordan has always been good at writing lines that land without trying too hard, and that carries over here. The difference is the subject matter. She’s no longer writing about being in love or getting hurt. She’s now writing about friendships fading out without any dramatic ending, about feeling like you’ve put yourself in a bubble without meaning to, about wondering whether anything you’re doing actually matters. On “Nowhere,” she writes about going numb and not quite knowing if you wanted to or not. Not every lyric lands with the same force, but the best lines here are as good as anything she’s written.

Ricochet is a good record from someone who is clearly growing as a writer and a musician. It also shows a little hesitation and nervousness that I think comes with the scary life challenges Jordan has faced over the last several years. Totally understandable but something the pacing drags in spots, and a few songs in the middle don’t quite leave the impression that they should.. But Jordan is doing something more ambitious here than she has before. She’s less interested in the intimate and more interested in the universal, and that’s a tricky space to write from without losing what made her music connect in the first place. I think she mostly pulls it off. The surgery, the move, the time away, the bigger questions she started asking herself, all of it is in the record in ways that feel honest rather than forced. At 26, Jordan is clearly not done figuring out what kind of artist she wants to be so I think there is so much more in the tank here.