by Marc Fong
Snail Mail, the project of Lindsey Jordan, brought her latest album, Ricochet, to the Regency Ballroom on Monday night, and the intimate, ornate venue turned out to be the ideal setting for a set this emotionally dense. After great opening performances from Sharp Pins and Rocket, Jordan and her band took the stage to an eruption from the packed room. The Ricochet material hit differently in a space this size. Tracks like “Nowhere” and “My Maker” unfurled their introspective weight with real immediacy, and the mid-set arrival of “Dead End” detonated into its explosive singalong with the whole room locked in. Jordan, who rebuilt her voice after surgery for vocal polyps, sang with a poise that felt hard-won, precise but never clinical.
What makes a Snail Mail show linger is how little Jordan relies on spectacle. She let the songs carry the night, moving through deep cuts like “Heat Wave” and “Pristine” alongside the new record’s more ruminative material, and the Regency’s ballroom acoustics gave everything room to breathe. The set closed out with “Pristine” sending the crowd back into the foggy San Francisco night still buzzing. It was a show about the terror of fleeting things and, fittingly, it already feels like something you’ll be trying to hold onto.
