Snail Mail’s Agony Ricochets on Her Latest Album

Photo: Daria Kobayashi Ritch

Snail Mail has returned after five years since her last full album release, with several singles interspersed in that time frame. The project, entitled Ricochet, is her third album and explores a new angle of misery and introspection that her previous music hadn’t touched on. It is clear that she took a strong thematic and sonic angle on this project that is indicative of self-reflection in your mid-twenties.

“Tractor Beam” opens the album with steady guitars and ethereal vocals. The song feels spaced out, further emphasised by the lyrical allusions to dissociation and daydreams: what would it look like to ride out and fade in memory?

The following track, “My Maker,” continues this sound with a more intense percussive and synths racing around in the background. The song carries heavy instrumental weight in its outro as it allows you to sit with Snail Mail’s pondering on death and the beginnings of nihilism. “Light on Our Feet“ also considers death, or perhaps the death of relationships, with a softer and melancholic sound that invokes reminiscing.

“Cruise“ builds on the themes of “Tractor Beam.” She discusses the ways ‘cruising’ through moments of life brings a sense of ease, that forgetting is easy to float to. This is reflected in the sound, pulling some elements from dreampop and, in accordance, feeling dreamlike in the way the guitars and production guide you through the song.

“Agony Freak“ picks up the pace from “Cruise” with emo taking the front stage. It almost serves as a commentary on the first four tracks, claiming her agony is its own creature. She battles with how this agony exists within her—embrace it or fight it. Similar to how this eventually encompasses her, by the end of the song, the instrumental follows this acceptance with a calm and slowing rhythm.

Bringing in grunge music influences, “Dead End“ blends bitterness, reminiscing, and concession into a track that taps into what it means to think about an old relationship when time has passed. The track does what emo-grunge does best: get you in your feels both lyrically and instrumentally.

“Butterfly“ brings pop-rock in a fun way, despite its rather depressing lyrics. The instrumental break function, to me, as the unfortunate time passing for the aforementioned butterfly. Gone from saying that keeping ‘them’ from plucking the wings and lifeforce to relying, potentially, on substances to retain a sense of life that was lost in that instrumental. Those implications are only enhanced by the way the guitar, bass, and drums go hard on the break, only to fade into the end.

“Nowhere“ is fun in the way both the instrumental and the lyrics play with each other. The line “I'm going nowhere, you'll never catch me” perfectly encompasses the irony that this song captures. This song circles back to the themes of “Tractor Beam” and “Cruise,“ but rather than the notion of dissociation, it wrestles more with numbness while everyone else is moving forward.

“Hell“ builds on the grunge and bitterness of “Dead End“ and calls into question relationships with people who have fallen into isolation. The guitars are dirty on this track, emphasising how ‘dirty’ the person being discussed in the song feels as Snail Mail asks how the person can live with themselves.

The title track, “Ricochet,“ is Snail Mail’s version of haunting. The vocals drone, and the production utilises stacking and guitars to back the way the song moves. The song reckons with everything she’s talked about on the album thus far. Conflicting relationships, nihilism, death, and personal misery all marry with each other on this track.

“Reverie“ starts out as the most acoustically broken-down song of the album, but picks up slightly about a third of the way through. While the song laments the falsities of idols and the ‘VIPs’, she also seems to have the most positive take on a relationship of the entire album: “I could do it all the time with you” and referring to the person as her lighthouse. This closer manages to bookend the sonic journey of the album and the emotional one, still living in the world of dreampop with her ‘reverie’.

For old fans awaiting her return, and new fans discovering her music, Ricochet is a great project filled with personal growth and reflection that people going through the motions of life can relate to.

Listen below:

LATEST POSTS: