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SNAIL MAIL
announces new album
VALENTINE
out November 5

+ Shares title track & video

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SNAIL MAIL // Photo Credit: Tina Tyrell

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Today, Snail Mail (Lindsey Jordan) announces Valentine, her new album out November 5th via Matador Records / Remote Control Records. To mark the occasion, she has released the title track, ‘Valentine’, and its outrageous period drama companion video directed by Josh Coll. Watch the video here.

“I wanted to take as much time as possible with this record to make sure I was happy with every detail before unleashing it unto y’all,” says Jordan. “Referring to the process as the deepest level of catharsis and therapy I have ever experienced would be a huge understatement. Valentine is my child!” The album is available for pre-order today HERE including limited edition vinyl variants.

On the ‘Valentine’ video, Jordan shares: “It was so rewarding concocting this video alongside the brilliant Josh Coll! Watching a few perverse images in my head metamorphose into this gorgeous storyline and eventually into a tangible visual was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. We connected over a mutual interest in the intersection between terror and devastating beauty. But also Tim and Eric and watered down ginger ale, which I had to drink a shocking amount of in those drink-bombing scenes.”

A hugely anticipated follow-up, Valentine was written and produced by 22-year-old Lindsey Jordan and co-produced by Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee) in 2019-2020. The album is filled with romance, heartbreak, blood, sweat and tears. But Valentine is poised and self-possessed, channelling anger and dejection into empowering revenge fantasies and rewriting the narrative of its own fate. Stitched throughout it is the melodrama and the camp Jordan so deftly utilises to offset her pain. The sonic leap forward can be heard from the first moments of the title track – the whispered voice and eerie sci-fi synths erupting into a full-on stadium-sized adrenaline-rush of a chorus. From there it’s all go – with digitised electronic inflected anthems, swooning baroque FM rockers, smouldering slow-jam R&B and some of the most gorgeous and heart-rending finger-picked guitar ballads this side of Elliott Smith. The star of the show however is Lindsey’s voice – no longer the prodigal wunderkind, her vocals and words are rawer, deeper, snarlier and more feeling than ever before.

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An album bio by fellow artist and friend Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) can be found below.

Valentine is the follow up to Snail Mail’s first full length, Lush. Her debut, written at just 17, turned the world on to an alarming talent. “Lindsey Jordan is arguably alt-rock’s most exciting new name,” said The Sunday Times. The Observer praised her “powerfully evocative vocals”, NME referred to Jordan as “… the next-great American songwriter”, while MTV UK called her “the next generation of indie-rock”.  The album was described alternately as “… the slow-burning rock album of summer” (i-D), “Capturing early adulthood in all its messy splendor” (Crack) and “A treat” (Stylist). Lush was named one of the Albums of the Year by BBC Arts & Entertainment, The Guardian, NME, Line Of Best Fit, Crack, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and many more, selling 200,000 units and spurring US, UK and EU tour sellouts. She became a breakout star and was included in Billboard’s 21 under 21 along with Billie Eilish, Khalid and more. Known in equal measures for her masterful guitar playing and her songwriting gravitas, The New York Times called Jordan “an innovator, creating fresh expectations for what a complex artistic statement from a young voice can sound like today.” With Valentine, Snail Mail delivers on all of that promise.

Pre-order / pre-save Snail Mail – Valentine

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More about  SNAIL MAIL

by Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee)

On her 2018 debut album Lush, seventeen-year-old Lindsey Jordan sang “I’m in full control / I’m not lost / Even when it’s love / Even when it’s not”. Her natural ability to be many things at once resonated with a lot of people. The contradiction of confidence and vulnerability, power and delicacy, had the impact of a wrecking ball when put to tape. It was an impressive and unequivocal career-making moment for Jordan.

On Valentine, her sophomore album out November 5th on Matador / Remote Control Records, Lindsey solidifies and defines this trajectory in a blaze of glory. In 10 songs, written over 2019-2020 by Jordan alone, we are taken on an adrenalising odyssey of genuine originality in an era in which “indie” music has been reduced to gentle, homogenous pop composed mostly by ghostwriters. Made with careful precision, Valentine shows an artist who has chosen to take her time. The reference points are broad and psychically stirring, while the lyrics build masterfully on the foundation set by Jordan’s first record to deliver a deeper understanding of heartbreak.
 
On ‘Ben Franklin‘, the second single of the album, Jordan sings “Moved on, but nothing feels true / Sometimes I hate her just for not being you / Post rehab I’ve been feeling so small / I miss your attention, I wish I could call”. It’s here that she mourns a lost love, conceding the true nature of a fleeting romantic tie-up and ultimately, referencing a stay in a recovery facility in Arizona. This 45-day interlude followed issues stemming from a young life colliding with sudden fame and success. Since she was not allowed to bring her instruments or recording equipment, Jordan began tabulating the new album arrangements on paper solely out of memory and imagination. It was after this choice to take radical action that Valentine really took its unique shape.
 
Jordan took her newfound sense of clarity and calm to Durham, North Carolina, along with the bones of a new album. Here she worked with Brad Cook (Bon Iver, Waxahatchee). For all the album’s vastness and gravity, it was in this small home studio that Jordan and Cook chipped away over the winter of early 2021 at co-producing a dynamic collection of genre-melding new songs, finishing it triumphantly in the spring. They were assisted by longtime bandmates Ray Brown and Alex Bass, as well as engineer Alex Farrar, with a live string section added later at Spacebomb Studios in Richmond.

Leaning more heavily into samples and synthesisers, the album hinges on a handful of remarkably untraditional pop songs. The first few seconds of opener and title track ‘Valentine’ see whispered voice and eerie sci-fi synth erupt into a stadium-sized, endorphin-rush of a chorus that is an overwhelming statement of intent. ‘Ben Franklin’, ‘Forever (Sailing)’ and ‘Madonna’ take imaginative routes to the highest peaks of catchiness. Jordan has always sung with a depth of intensity and conviction, and the climactic pop moments on Valentine are delivered with such a tenet and a darkness and a beauty that’s noisy and guttural, taking on the singularity that usually comes from a veteran artist.

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 As captivating as the synth-driven songs are, it’s the more delicate moments like ‘Light Blue’, ‘c.et. al.’ and ‘Mia’ that distill the albums range and depth. “Baby blue, I’m so behind / Can’t make sense of the faces in and out of my life / Whirling above our daily routines / Both buried in problems, baby, honestly” Jordan sings on ‘c. et. al.’ with a devastating certainty. These more ethereal, dextrously finger-picked folk songs peppered in throughout the album are nuanced in their vocal delivery and confident in their intricate arrangement. They come in like a breath of air, a moment to let the mind wander, but quickly drown the listener in their melodic alchemy and lyrical punch. 

The album is rounded out radiantly by guitar-driven rock songs like ‘Automate’, ‘Glory’ and ‘Headlock’. Reminiscent of Lush but with a marked tonal shift, Jordan again shows her prowess as a guitar player with chorus-y leads and rhythmic, wall-of-sound riffs. ‘Headlock’ highlights this pivot with high-pitched dissonance and celestially affected lead parts – “Can’t go out I’m tethered to / Another world where we’re together / Are you lost in it too?”, she sings with grit and fatigue, building so poignantly on her sturdy foundation of out-and-out melancholy. On Valentine, we are taken 100 miles deeper into the world Jordan created with Lush, led through passageways and around dark corners, landing somewhere we never dreamed existed. 
 
Today, in the wake of recording Valentine, Jordan is focused on trying to continue healing without slowing down. The album comes in the midst of so much growth, in the fertile soil of a harrowing bottom-out. On the heels of life-altering success, a painful breakup and 6 weeks in treatment, Jordan appears vibrant and sharp. “Mia, don’t cry / I love you forever / But I gotta grow up now / No I can’t keep holding onto you anymore” she sings on the album closer ‘Mia’. She sings softly but her voice cuts through like a hacksaw. The song is lamenting a lost love, saying a somber goodbye, and it closes the door on a bitter cold season for Jordan. Leaving room for a long and storied path, Valentine is somehow a jolt and a lovebuzz all at once.

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 VALENTINE
Tracklisting

1. Valentine
2. Ben Franklin
3. Headlock
4. Light Blue
5. Forever (Sailing)
6. Madonna
7. c. et. al.
8. Glory
9. Automate
10. Mia

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AMNPLIFY – JC