There are few youthful rites of passage more influential than just riding around in a car with nothing to do. For kids who grew up on Long Island, that road usually led to getting high in a diner parking lot. For Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan, that custom takes us out to the woods, with fireworks overhead and joyous new single “Dead End” playing on the car stereo. Exploring the simplicity of suburban adolescence, it’s the first new sounds from the Maryland project’s upcoming third album Ricochet, its first in five years and out March 27 on Matador Records, and within it are strains of ’90s alt-rock and pop-Americana making out like teenagers in the back seat. “We shot the video for ‘Dead End’ in random places all around rural North Carolina between the hours of 5 p.m. and 4 a.m. on one of the coldest nights of my life,” Jordan says of her and co-director Elsie Richter. “The goal was to be inconspicuous with the fireworks, but someone called the cops on us.” Ain’t that the way it always be.
Photo Credit: Daria Kobayashi Ritch