‘Valentine’ by Snail Mail Review: The Beauty and Pain of Private Moments

[peekaboo]

Lindsey Jordan’s second record is a powerful look at love, intimacy and vulnerability.

Lindsey Jordan performing in 2019

Photo: Scott Legato/Getty Images

In her music and her life, Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan is an expert chronicler of the rules and assumptions that govern public and private spaces. Her songs are filled with tension between what she observes and what she feels; she can be entertainingly sneering and dismissive of an ex-lover in one line, and then in the next describe the loneliness that no one else can see. Her lyrics are sometimes caustic and judgmental and can be very funny, but she uses her sharpest language as armor to protect her vulnerability. And Ms. Jordan’s persona finds her navigating some of these same forces, between what she wants to share with her audience and what she’d rather keep to herself. 

She broke through as an artist when young—her 2018 LP “Lush” was a critical hit that came out when she was still only 18. While releasing records fulfilled a lifelong dream—she got her first guitar when she was 5 years old—the pressure of maintaining a media image and the realities of life as a touring musician, of long nights surrounded by people indulging in drugs and alcohol, took their toll. Ms. Jordan spent 45 days in rehab late in 2020, and in subsequent interviews she seems to be recalibrating how to build a life as a performer. She returns at age 22 with “Valentine” (Matador), out now, an even stronger offering than her praiseworthy debut and one of the best indie rock records of 2021. 

While it’s Ms. Jordan’s solo project, Snail Mail sounds like a band thanks to a roster of accompanying musicians, some of whom Ms. Jordan has known since her high-school days in a Baltimore suburb. She wrote “Valentine” on her own and co-produced the album with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). Growing up, she fell in love with the pop-punk band Paramore, but her work is more indebted to the alternative rock of the ’90s, particularly the arch perspective of Liz Phair and the emotional excavation of Fiona Apple. Sonically, her debut often evoked the crunchy quiet-loud structure that blossomed in the early grunge era. 

 

The opening title track here perfects this dynamic approach to songwriting. It begins quietly and Ms. Jordan’s soft singing conveys hurt and fear, describing how it feels to nurse a new relationship while being scrutinized—“Let’s go be alone / Where no one can see us, honey / Careful in that room / Those parasitic cameras, don’t they stop to stare at you?” And then her cadence speeds up as the song blasts into its power-chord chorus, as she vents the anger she felt when it all fell apart (“So why’d you wanna erase me, darling valentine?”). 

Ms. Jordan’s voice is limited in terms of its range and power, but she has become very good at making it fit her songs, and her intuitive phrasing allows her to get her point across in a multitude of musical settings. She expands those settings greatly here, flitting from crunchy rock to delicate folk to synth-pop. On track 2, “Ben Franklin,” a snaking bassline and airy synthesizers frame her vocals, as she chastises a lover who didn’t honor promises while also touching on her own fragile state as she struggles with substance abuse, stating it plainly: “Post rehab, I’ve been feeling so small.” In one case, the genre exploration seems forced—“Forever (Sailing),” coming midway through the album, has a lightness and bounce that almost put it in the realm of R&B, but the arrangement doesn’t quite jell with Ms. Jordan’s singing; it’s a solid offering that would be further elevated with a different vocalist. 

But “Valentine” doesn’t otherwise miss. The subject of her lyrics is relatively narrow—they’re virtually all about romantic relationships—but each track has its own perspective, offering a new angle on a familiar experience. Ms. Jordan likes to append biting lines with a pet name or expression—“babe,” “honey” and “tiger” show up, multiple times in the case of the first two—conveying the drive to cut down to size someone who has wronged her. She calls out pretension in others but never lets herself down easy. Late in the album, on “Glory,” she sings “Jesus died just to save you” to a woman she used to date. (Ms. Jordan is gay.) Bringing to mind Patti Smith’s famous opening line in “Gloria,” it’s sung over a superlative production with guitars that hum and chime, combining a tough post-punk chug with the sunny ring of the Byrds. 

When Ms. Jordan slows the tempo and strips down the backing, she conjures images of another of her foundational heroes, Elliott Smith. On the acoustic ballad “C. et al.,” she starts a grim day with a brutal hangover and the memory of someone she once loved who is now gone, and her life has lost meaning: “Woke up without why or how.” On the gorgeous “Headlock,” she once again meditates on private desire, noting “Sorrow snuck into our secret place.” And then, on the closing “Mia”—which adds a lovely string arrangement and quiet piano to a finger-picked guitar—her voice cracks as she finally comes to terms with letting go and moving on. “I gotta grow up now,” she sings. “No, I can’t keep holding onto you anymore.” It’s as if a door to the outside world has been opened and you want to follow her to this new place—her earned wisdom becomes the listener’s.