Snail Mail - Ricochet

I was eighteen when I first heard The Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight.” Just like thirty years’ worth of teenagers before me, I was instantly captivated: that majestic topline soars like a meteor shower; pure, gawky lines like “the impossible is possible tonight” sweep you up in their earnestness and conviction. “Tonight, Tonight,” like much of ‘90’s rock, is built on the idea that sheer belief will slice through the mundane bullshit of everyday life. Daydreaming about peaches will bring you love. You can trade eternity for just one touch. And yes, the impossible can be made possible.

In 2024, Snail Mail covered “Tonight, Tonight” in all its schmaltzy glory for I Saw the TV Glow, Jane Schoenbrun’s horror film that blended ‘90s TV references into a surreal, nightmarish dreamscape. It’s a natural fit; in many ways, Snail Mail, aka Lindsey Jordan, is an heir to that decade’s earnest, angsty spirit. Her pen has the same incisiveness and intimacy as Liz Phair’s, and her vision of suburban ennui is shot through with the same bone-deep yearning as that of Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan. Fitting, then, that her newest full-length Ricochet picks up where her cover of “Tonight, Tonight” left off. For better and for worse, Snail Mail is going ‘90s.

From its opening moments, Ricochet is not shy about its moodboard. “Tractor Beam” cribs its guitar riff from The Presidents of the United States of America’s “Peaches.” The soaring chorus of “Cruise” sounds like that of Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris.” Ricochet is full of string orchestras, anthemic guitar riffs, and stately drums, as are the dreamier cuts on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Smashing Pumpkins’ 1995 masterpiece and the parent album of “Tonight, Tonight.” The sound of Ricochet can feel like a closetful of Hot Topic graphic tees, but it doesn’t strike me as full-on pastiche. Jordan’s take on celestial rock music is altogether dreamier than Billy Corgan’s—she’s not a “rat in a cage,” but “skyward on a tractor beam”—and her riffs are more melodic and less jagged. It’s almost as if Ricochet is more interested in the feeling of majesty and awe that Mellon Collie elicits than in recreating the sound wholesale. It does away with Mellon Collie’s exterior angst to reveal the tenderness and optimism beneath.

But in pursuing this well-trod sound, Snail Mail loses much of what made her original. I think back to 2018’s Lush, one of my favorite albums of all time, where Jordan transcended the constraints of a three-piece rock band with her unparalleled sense of guitar tuning and chord voicing. Jordan’s sonic palette has expanded since then, but Snail Mail never sounded more singular and cutting-edge than in 2018. On Ricochet, she sounds a lot like The Presidents of the United States of America, Smashing Pumpkins, and Goo Goo Dolls–and a bit less like Snail Mail.

The other elephant in the room is her voice: in 2021, she underwent surgery to remove polyps from her vocal cords. Afterward, she “learned how to sing again,” and at times she sounds like an entirely different artist. Her performances on Ricochet are more nasal and a bit less expressive; she often opts for a perfunctory croon where once she’d hit a heart-stopping belt. If her goal was to sound more like Billy Corgan, then she is succeeding on a purely nasal front, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. The subdued vocal approach does suit the production, which is cozy to a fault, like much post-Boygenius indie rock. But the vocals, as with everything on this album, could use more definition and character.

Still, Jordan subtly reinvents her perspective on Ricochet in a way that makes me excited for what’s to come. Since Lush, Jordan’s outlook has gradually broadened beyond romance, and on Ricochet, she wrestles with fame, selfhood, and mortality. The lyrics are searching, fantastical; her gaze travels upward in pursuit of tractor beams, planes to heaven, and hot baths in the sky. Where once her lyricism was earthly and intensely corporeal, now it turns to the heavens. “My Maker,” the second single from the album, is all a daydream: “I wanna fly a plane to Heaven / tarry at the airport bar,” she begins. What follows is a meditation on what we leave behind after we die and what, if anything, is looking out for us from above. The questions she raises are answered only by an elliptical John Lennon lyric: “Above us, it’s just sky.”

There’s freedom in this sentiment–if there’s no heaven and only sky, then we’re only duty-bound to ourselves and each other, rather than a higher power. To look up is to acknowledge the boundlessness of the universe and our infinitesimally tiny place in it all, an idea that is simultaneously crushing and liberating. It’s an interesting, nihilistic point of view, and though Ricochet barely scratches the surface of these themes, you can hear the shift in perspective. “Light On Our Feet” celebrates the feeling of being “warm and alive” and appreciating each day; “Cruise” finds her pleading to “Forget our existence… just cruise.” She finds levity in the midst of existential dread, an attitude that carries over on tracks like “Ricochet” and “Reverie,” which shrug at the absurdity of fame. “All my heroes are nothing more than socialites,” she says on “Reverie,” and you can practically hear her wry grin. Ricochet may not reach the fervid heights of its inspirations, but in its best moments, it charts its own path. It’s a balm, and that’s enough in its own right.