Less than Pristine: Snail Mail at the Fox

In the wake of her sophomore album Valentine (2021), an LP that marked a sonic shift in the Snail Mail catalogue, Baltimore’s Lindsey Jordan and her band voyaged west to pay a visit to the Fox Theater on April 24. Accompanied by post-punkers from down under, The Goon Sax, she played a skeleton-crew set with a healthy mix of old and new songs to a willing crowd of Bay Area indie kids.

Running behind schedule but wasting no time, Brisbane’s The Goon Sax commenced with a droning dark wave-y number without so much as a nod to the audience. The sultry quintet hypnotized the crowd, illuminated by intermittent flashes of blue light against the yawning black backdrop. As their set went on, it grew clear: The Goon Sax had done this before, but they were not seasoned veterans of the road. Their song transitions were less than seamless, their guitars tuned by hand, their internal interactions still unrehearsed. This worked immensely in their favor, allowing the audience to engage with them even as they set their sights inward on the mechanics of the performance. The band kept you on your toes—no performer stayed too long on a single instrument. Halfway through the set, they opted for a drum machine, allowing their percussionist to take center stage and transporting the audience into an OP-1 paradise. Drummer Riley Jones returned to the kit for “Make Time 4 Love,” a more upbeat selection that raised the crowd’s waning energy and juxtaposed the treble notes of a cowbell with lead singer Louis Forster’s deep baritone. Throughout the set, the band achieved the tonal richness championed by their genre’s forebears, post-punk behemoths like Depeche Mode and Sonic Youth. Guitar tones were diverse and tasteful, carefully honed so as not to clog the soundscape, with ample room for Forster’s bass to shine. Meanwhile ethereal backup vocals graced almost every song in the lineup.

Snail Mail’s stage design complemented the Fox, bringing an ornate neoclassical aesthetic to the performance. Ivy crept up the mic stands while one of two cupid statues onstage leveled its arrow at the band’s mastermind, the other aiming for the rafters of the theater. The band swaggered on stage to Madleen Kane’s melancholy 70’s ballad “You & I,” a song sampled by the centerpiece of the new record “Forever (Sailing),” before launching into its title track. Following “Valentine” came “Ben Franklin,” hinting at a set that would follow the album’s chronology. However, Jordan quickly shifted gears with fan-favorite ”Speaking Terms”, bridging the two seemingly distinct eras of her music. Following the unexplained absence of their keyboardist, Jordan joked the remaining group of four was cosplaying a “real rock band tonight,” though something crucial was lost in the return of her adolescent performance model. A synth-heavy album, Valentine relies far less on the guitar solos that defined Snail Mail’s earlier works. The band’s lead guitarist attempted to compensate for the missing link with effect pedals and palm-muted notes, but it remained evident this had thrown a wrench in their plans.

The performance marked a clear departure from Snail Mail’s raw, unvarnished roots. Gone are the days of boundless longing and unruly guitars; Lindsey Jordan wants to assert her burgeoning maturity post-rehab and post-operation. Her new haircut and purple slacks underscored these changes, reaffirming the shift in both the band and Jordan herself. Jordan also directly addressed the vocal cord surgery she underwent last December, undoing some of the damage wrought on her vocal cords by her teenage smoking habit. As a result; however, the band felt defanged throughout their performance. They resorted to manufacturing crescendos to create variation while Jordan halfheartedly danced, beer in hand, back and forth behind her microphone. The one exception, a standout amid her lackluster stage presence, was “Madonna”—Jordan sank to the floor while singing about religious devotion to one’s lover, literally kneeling at their metaphysical altar above the audience. She crossed herself on-beat with the opening lyrics of the chorus, “body and blood.”

Jordan’s vocals shone the most during acoustic numbers, accompanied solely by her own guitar. The stripped-down instrumentals mingled well with Jordan’s voice, while also affording it the space it needed to strike the audience. The performance closed with a double encore, ending with Snail Mail’s most popular track, “Pristine.” With this triumphant conclusion, the band waltzed offstage. They soon set sail to their next destination in LA, sure to pick up speed along the journey.