Valentine is the title of Snail Mail's 2nd album

Lindsey Jordan’s second album as Snail Mail is for anyone who’s been bloodied by Cupid’s arrow. Offered up by a self-professed but seemingly unlucky romantic, Valentine documents love in all stages, but mostly in disrepair. Its palette extends beyond pinks and reds: There’s the envious green of seeing an old love with someone new, the consuming black of bottoming out, and, occasionally, the clear blue of weightless bliss, however fleeting.

Jordan, now 22, says she fielded 15 different label offers while she was still in high school. After signing with Matador and releasing Lush in 2018, she became a public figure and a magnet for parasocial attachment, drawing hordes of fans who saw themselves in her queerness and keen sensitivity. Amid this whirlpool of attention, Jordan found that her personal boundaries were too permeable; the overexposure caused enough harm to land her in rehab last year, an experience she mentions offhandedly once on Valentine. Afterwards, she handed her social media accounts to an assistant and hired a media trainer to help her deflect prying journalists.

But now that she has patched the holes from which her personal life seeped out into the public, her music, more than ever, functions as the release valve. On Lush (her 1^st album – 2018), she explored the expressive but limited possibilities of a three-piece rock band; on Valentine she flirts with pop—sharpening her hooks, reaching for the synths and strings. Where parts of Lush revealed themselves slowly, saving their secrets for intent listening, Valentine is more immediate, grabbing your gaze and refusing to let go for 32 straight minutes.

Swept up in the early-pandemic migration that sent scores of twentysomethings back to their parents’ homes, Jordan wrote much of Valentine on the floor of her childhood bedroom, the same place that she penned her early songs of longing and languishing. Now as then, love is an all-consuming force in her music, but she writes with a deeper understanding of its destructive potential and a willingness to articulate it in arresting terms. Romance and alcohol are twin toxins on Valentine, each amplifying the other’s damaging effects, each informing Jordan’s perspective on the other.

Some of Valentine’s best moments come when Jordan’s textures are as bold as her emotions. “Ben Franklin” is an infectious highlight; come for the sturdy bass groove and the delicious irony of “Got money/I don’t care about sex” in the verse; stay for Jordan’s bratty delivery of “huh, honey?,” her melody doubled by wiggling synth and backed up with guest vocals from Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on the chorus.