Snail Mail to host two days of music at Great American Music Hall as part of annual Noise Pop fest

Originally posted in the SF Examiner on February 21

If you are fortunate enough to run into Snail Mail singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan in public these days, you’ll probably notice that she’s holding a camera or a phone to document the moment.

Jordan first burst upon the scene nearly a decade ago as a precocious wunderkind, releasing her debut EP, “Habit” as a 16-year-old. Her first full-length album — 2018’s “Lush,” a fully-formed collection of wistful indie-pop songs — landed her on endless music publication lists for album of the year.

Yet during those halcyon early days, when she was touring relentlessly and playing nonstop, Jordan had little time to reflect and appreciate the uniqueness of her situation. Now, she said, she has a renewed focus on capturing and cherishing the ephemera of her prodigious music career.

“I’m way more in like an archivist period in my life,” said Jordan, now 24. “I’m keeping passes and souvenirs from everywhere now. When everything first happened, it was just so much, so fast, and it wasn’t like I wasn’t grateful for everything, but it just didn’t really register. Now, I want to take a lot of pictures and, you know, keep wristbands and just try to appreciate everything a little more.”

Expect plenty of Polaroids to snap on March 1 and 2, when Snail Mail hosts two days of music at the Great American Music Hall. A festival-within-a-festival, the two shows are being billed as the second annual Valentine West, an event curated by Jordan featuring some of her favorite artists (the event title is a tribute to her sophomore album, “Valentine.”).

The two-day gathering will be a highlight of this year’s Noise Pop Music and Arts Festival, an annual weeklong-plus music event that takes place in multiple venues throughout the Bay Area.

This year’s Noise Pop lineup features legendary hip-hop group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, lo-fi troubadour John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats, and avant-garde impresario Laetitia Sadier of the post-rock outfit Stereolab, among more than 100 other acts.

There will be plenty of Bay Area groups included in that lineup, including ubiquitous musician Stephen Steinbrink, who will open for Snail Mail on March 1, and Richmond district dream-poppers The Reds, Pink and Purples, who will take the stage March 2.

“We toured a little with Stephen when he was playing in [now-disbanded] Girlpool and just became massive fans of his work,” said Jordan. “I haven’t been following the San Francisco scene super closely, but every band I’ve heard from The City, I’ve really liked.”

Valentine West will be one of only a handful of live dates for Jordan and Snail Mail this year. Even though it’s been more than two years since the release of “Valentine,” Jordan said she is intent on keeping up a semi-regular touring schedule for Snail Mail (which is a multipiece ensemble live) to keep its performances tight, and also to ensure that the band stays on people’s peripheries in an age of ever-dwindling attention spans.

She’s also mindful of maintaining a healthy approach to her work. Following the runaway smash success of “Lush,” Jordan said she struggled with the overwhelming stress that accompanied the whirlwind life of a musician.

Despite those challenges and a lingering sense of outsized expectations entering her second album, Jordan managed to dazzle again with “Valentine,” which was released in 2021. Featuring slight changes to her vocal inflections, more emphasis on gauzy synth work (Jordan is a highly celebrated guitarist) and increasingly mature lyrical interplay, “Valentine” represented the next logical evolution of a talented artist.

“I’m really proud of that album, because I was just going through so many natural disasters in my life at the time,” Jordan said. “Coming off ‘Lush,’ I was putting myself through the wringer, asking myself, ‘How am I going to do this again?’ But eventually I was able to navigate things and I just feel so much better as a result of that experience.”

Jordan said she’s working on new material, although she doesn’t have a definitive timetable for the next Snail Mail record. She said she doesn’t want to push the album too far out, though, because she understands just how precious the opportunity she has at the moment.

“I started this thing off as this teenage pop project, which always made me worried that people’s attention would kind of fade away after the whole teenager thing kind of died down,” she said. “I was always nervous that I wouldn’t be able to come up with enough songs to keep us from fading into obscurity, so it’s been so important for me to keep myself out there and continue pushing myself as an artist.

“But I feel like I know what it takes to keep the Snail Mail ship running now. It’s kind of a rickety pirate ship at times, but we make it work.”