08.06.18

That 19-year-old singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan has grown up in these apathetic times and created such tender songs is nearly as remarkable as the talent she’s accrued at her young age. Tutored by fellow Matador artist Mary Timony (of Helium and Wild Flag), Jordan’s guitar playing spans sparky and insistent strumming to waterfalls of complex fingerpicking. Each song creates its own idiosyncratic ecosystem in which a new relationship blooms, or withers.

On her debut album as Snail Mail, Jordan pines for a series of former lovers throughout the album, and it’s refreshing to hear the emotions which we usually thrash out in our own heads being clearly communicated with no shame. In fact, this becomes a theme of the album: Jordan repeatedly finds that a consequence of showing herself so plainly to the world is that she has her ego and sense of self knocked around. But she keeps on loving even when that’s hard to do. On Full Control, she asserts the importance of keeping a sense of herself, even when she’s utterly smitten: “I’m not lost, even when it’s love” she repeats, determinedly. In a world of ghosting, situationships and an innate fear of ‘catching feelings’, Snail Mail’s Lush is the sound of Lindsey Jordan reminding us authentic emotional connections really are out there – even if you have to wade through some terrible shit along the way.

Sammy Jones