Snail Mail: Valentine | 4ZZZ Brisbane 102.1FM

- The fecund beginnings have yielded new shoots and what they have produced is glorious. Snail Mail are well on their way to being to conduit for modern romantics, both the lovers kind and that art movement from back in day. Songs steeped in cathartic-relationship-confessionals spark bonding chemicals in your brain. Outside the omnipresent emotional weight, tell me the aesthetic of the record doesn’t reek of romanticism? It makes you want to ink out a long, flowery pledge of intimate allegiance to your love or vile, scandalous slander and sharp-tongued damnation to the one who did you wrong. While the previous outing Lush houses verdant greenery, Valentine arrives flanked by deft deviations and beautiful blooms revelling in their own lifeforce.

Opening a record with your lead single when said lead single is the title track of the record: that’s a bravura approach. It’s also an approach that -when executed as well as Valentine was- works unbelievably well. Lindsay Jordan mulls over what feels like the first few days after a heavy breakup. This verbalised train of thought is barely held together by two vastly contrasting instruments: lugubrious drums and scattered, nervous guitar. Both are an adroit representation of those kind of emotions. You’re numb to a certain extent but your mind is frantically ticking over in the background. When the chorus hits, this bare expanse balloons into an emphatic rage with two concise lines. A more even affair follows with Ben Franklin plodding along at a pace that would have appeased the crowd on The Simpsons' episode set around Lollapalooza. It incorporates a wealth of layering. The slick layer of harmonies, both vocal and instrumental, compliment Jordan’s vocals and blend together in perfect cohesion at the start of the chorus. The way in which her voice cracks from an airy falsetto back into her normal register isn’t a particularly major feature but one I loved that much it needed to be included.

Headlock and Glory are intertextual lineages to Snail Mail’s distorted, jangly past. Mid-paced and directed almost entirely by a cavalcade of chords, these songs serve as Valentine’s staple. The former entwines some piano passages to the grove and that piano is brought back in conjunction with gorgeous string arrangements on the whisper quiet Light Blue. Bare bones picked guitar is very much the pillar as washes of strings brush effortlessly over. Album ender Mia and c. et al put exposed prose alongside delicate guitars. Precisely threaded vocals over minimal music, these songs are spun into an auditory journal in some lonesome bedroom.

The greatest departure from the usual is this album's success, given how utterly dreamy Forever (Sailing) is. It's this saccharine ballad that begs to be slow danced to. We double down on the intertextuality we mentioned earlier when the sample from You & I is heard ever so faintly in the background.

A cure for your emotional turmoil Valentine is certainly not. More something you can soundtrack yourself going through a time, so you fully feel what’s percolating inside you. Snail Mail have taken confessional chords and journaled trains of thought and expanded upon them in both grand and gentle ways. Maybe it was the poet’s blouse on the cover. Maybe it’s the way each song resonates like something you’ve experienced before. Maybe, just maybe, Valentine’s Day should be moved to this release date.

- Matt Lynch.