Snail Mail – Ricochet
Snail Mail — the project of Lindsey Jordan — announces her highly anticipated third album, Ricochet, due out March 27 on Matador Records.
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.
Alongside the announcement, Jordan shares 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 and sugary hooks, building tension until it culminates into an explosive ’nah-nah-nah’ singalong. Speaking of the video which she directed alongside Elsie Richter, Lindsay shares, “We shot the video for ‘Dead End’ in random places all around rural North Carolina between the hours of 5pm and 4am on one of the coldest nights of my life. The goal was to be inconspicuous with the fireworks, but someone called the cops on us.”
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.” On “My Maker,” Jordan imagines overstaying her welcome at a celestial airport bar, pleading, “Oh, bouncer in the sky / Let me in, I’m scared to die.” 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.
Today, Snail Mail also announces a major North American tour this spring, kicking off April 10 in Milwaukee and running through early May. The tour will mark Jordan and her band’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.
Snail Mail Tour Dates:
April 10 — Milwaukee, WI — Turner Hall *
April 11 — Chicago, IL — The Riviera Theatre *^
April 12 — Detroit, MI — Majestic Theatre *^
April 13 — Toronto, ON — The Concert Hall *^
April 15 — Brooklyn, NY — Brooklyn Paramount *~
April 16 — Philadelphia, PA — The Fillmore *+
April 17 — Boston, MA — Big Night Live *+
April 18 — Baltimore, MD — Union Collective Parking Lot *+
April 20 — Saxapahaw, NC — Haw River Ballroom *
April 21 — Asheville, NC — The Orange Peel *
April 22 — Atlanta, GA — Variety Playhouse *
April 24 — Houston, TX — White Oak Music Hall (Downstairs) *
April 25 — Dallas, TX — Granada Theater *
April 26 — Austin, TX — Stubb’s *
April 28 — Oklahoma City, OK — The Tower Theatre *
April 30 — Phoenix, AZ — The Van Buren *&
May 1 — Los Angeles, CA — The Wiltern *%
May 2 — San Diego, CA — Observatory North Park *&
May 4 — San Francisco, CA — The Warfield *%
May 5 — Sacramento, CA — Ace of Spades *&
May 7 — Portland, OR — Crystal Ballroom *&
May 8 — Seattle, WA — Moore Theatre *&
May 9 — Vancouver, BC — Vogue Theatre *&
May 11 — Boise, ID — Treefort Music Hall *&
May 13 — Denver, CO — Ogden Theatre *&
May 15 — Salt Lake City, UT — Kilby Block Party
June 26 — London, UK — Electric Ballroom
w/support:
* Sharp Pins
^ Avalon Emerson and The Charm
~ @
+ Swirlies
& Armlock
% Rocket
#snailmailband