Hey, Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail, what's the best part of Coachella?
"I really liked the catering situation. They had a good salad bar, good hot dogs. They had soooo much stuff," says the singer-guitarist from Palm Springs, Calif., after just waking up on the Monday after the festival's first weekend.
That first weekend was a busy one for Jordan. Even before she appeared with Snail Mail, she performed with Angel Olsen on Olsen's infectious "Shut Up Kiss Me." Shaky Instagram video shows the two frontwomen smiling at each other while singing the chorus and having some genuine rock 'n' roll fun.
"It just came about," Jordan says when asked if the cameo was pre-planned.
Her brief music career has seemed much less off the cuff.
Growing up in Ellicott City, Md., Jordan began taking classical guitar lessons at 5 years old. (One of her more recent teachers was Mary Timony of Helium and Ex Hex.) She started writing songs in her early teens and founded Snail Mail to record the 2016 EP Habit when she was still in high school.
Filled with her brooding, shoegazey strumming and vocals that flow from flat and deadpan to careening and cracked, the album, released on Sister Polygon Records, bristles with a gauzy longing and wisdom beyond her years. The strength of the EP attracted the folks at Matador Records and now a follow-up is on the way.
Lush, Snail Mail's full-length debut, will be released June 8.
"I feel like everything's changed," Jordan says when asked about the difference in recording the two albums. "For the first one, there wasn't really any budget. For this one, we worked with a producer and I had a lot more time to write."
She also geeked out on the technical side of making the new album with producer Jake Aron, which was recorded in Woodstock, N.Y.
"It was pretty inspiring," she says of the sessions. "It was mostly just him and I in the studio, so I got to get a really good taste of how mixing and the whole mastering process works. I know some bands prefer not to be there for that because it's kind of boring, but I was sitting in the chair next to him the whole time."
That attention to detail is nothing new, she says: "I'm definitely a control freak. I wanted to make sure everything was how I imagined it. The process is insane but it was really cool."
In looking for inspiration, she and Aron studied the production on albums by Alvvays, Big Thief's Capacity, Solange and others.
"We were in the studio listening to records for months," Jordan says with a chuckle. "We kept going back to Big Thief. That band is truly perfect sounding."
Weekend on 04/26/2018