Photos by Bobby Nicholas
Generation Z’s fetishization of ’90s culture, from oversized clothing to embracing the show “Friends,” is hard to navigate for those who lived through it. Is it an homage? A piss take? Appropriation?
Such questions might have been on the minds of the handful of fans at Brooklyn Paramount last Wednesday who were old enough to remember when CDs took over for tapes and going online required tying up your parents’ phone line, there to see Lindsey Jordan, the singer and guitarist who performs as Snail Mail, who was 5 years old when “Friends” went off the air and wasn’t yet born when MTV’s “Alternative Nation” died in 1997.
Jordan’s tremendous but not flashy guitar skills, gift for melody and perpetually sarcastic-sounding vocal delivery put her near the top of the ’90’s revivalists, alongside the likes of Soccer Mommy and Beabadoobee, where Liz Phair and Stephen Malkmus are idols and Taylor Swift is an afterthought. It serves her well on her brand new album “Ricochet,” and it did so in concert at the gorgeous theater on Flatbush Ave as well.
A simple backdrop of a house and white picket fence set the stage as audio from a guitar tutorial played before the band walked out and launched into the one-two punch that opens “Ricochet”: the infectious, driving “Tractor Beam” and syncopated and clever “My Maker.” “You can cast my letters to the sea/ But you can’t find anyone else like me,” she sang on the opener. “My Maker,” lush and sparse, is the best song on the album and was a highlight of the performance; Jordan’s plain vocals, with a tinge of yearning, were the perfect vessel for the mystical themes of her lyrics.
Snail Mail looked back to her 2018 debut album, “Lush,” for the next selection, “Heat Wave.” After the intro, she reared back and lifted the neck of her Fender Jazzmaster while riffing in a bit of guitar heroine posturing. Jordan and company snapped back to the new record with “Hell,” singing “You can’t count yourself to sleep/2,300 sheep” before the grungy chorus: “Nobody else decides the way we scurry around this hell.”
Jordan turned back to “Lush” for “Speaking Terms,” deploying some seasick guitar bends, then shared three straight from “Ricochet”: “Nowhere,” “Dead End” and “Cruise.”
A bit past the halfway point of the set, similar keys, tempos and moods sapped some of its momentum; diehard fans didn’t care. “Agony Freak” from “Ricochet” brought renewed focus. When Jordan sang “You should get out while you can, girl” over spiky riffs, she recalled the post-emo of groups like Tigers Jaw more than anything from the ’90s.
Another new song, “Butterfly,” was sandwiched by two from Snail Mail’s second album, “Valentine” (2021). Again, the newer track stood out, with taut, knotty guitars and hazy shoegaze vibes. Jordan’s solo at the end was an attention-getter.
A trio of three more “Ricochet” songs gave the album a complete airing, besides its closer, “Reverie”: “Nowhere,” “Light on Our Feet” and the title track. “Thank you guys so damn much. This is my last song,” Jordan said before the finale, eschewing a traditional encore. Here, Foo Fighters and one of their source bands, Sunny Day Real Estate, could be heard in the moody, clanging guitars.
Chicago’s Sharp Pins provided direct support with a short and sweet set of jangly and shambolic neo garage rock. The Byrds-meets-British Invasion feel of Kai Slater’s recorded work takes on a heavier, more dangerous feel on stage. He and his band closed their nine-song slot with “Queen of Globes and Mirrors,” a minor key head‑bopper with nice vocal harmonies, and the raucous “I Can’t Stop.”
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