Snail Mail’s Lindsey Jordan is relaxed and casual before her show at Toronto’s Velvet Underground on June 14, despite being late for soundcheck after getting caught in the city’s famous rush hour traffic. Generous with her time, the rising indie star is happy to take pictures with fans at the restaurant across the street and to sit down to record a podcast co-hosted by Indie Shuffle and This Broken Mixed Tape.

Much like her lyrics, 19-year-old Jordan is honest and direct with her answers, yet mature enough to have boundaries. In her short time in the spotlight, she has already learned the value of not giving her whole self to the press. She moves between being an open book on topics such as Liz Phair fandom, and her budding fame, to drawing the line at discussing the backlash that came with signing with a major label and bad fans (“I would probably rather not give that person any attention.”)

Confident without coming across as egomaniacal, Jordan walked us through how things are changing for her since the release of her full length, and much-hyped, debut album Lush earlier this year. She had this to say:

Snail Mail has been around for a minute or two but after Lush came out things quickly kind of progressed in this way that is very confusing to me because I get the ticket sales emails all the time. Today I got this one that said like, pretty much like all of these shows had sold out, not all of them but you know. And then yesterday we played Pittsburg, we’d never played Pittsburg, and it was like sold out. When we played Europe there were all these places we had never played that had sold out. And the internet stuff doesn’t really do anything for me or to me. It’s more like, playing. And there are people there that care and know the words and it's confusing to me because we like, we did a headlining tour in January and it was like night and day. I mean the shows were selling out and they were amazing and fun, but they were like so much smaller. The fanbase was, they would show up late and be like, ‘oh that was cool,’ but now people are really excited and have a lot of like personal connections with the music and stuff, which is very different and it’s very weird because it felt like it just happened. That jump just happened out of nowhere, it feels like.

The recording of Lush was nothing short of a heroic effort for the young songwriter. After releasing her debut EP Habit in 2016, Jordan signed to Matador records. The label gave her space and artistic freedom during the recording process of Lush that resulted in Jordan writing no less than 30 songs. These were later culled down to 10 in what she calls, “a vicious process.” The songs that did make the cut are personal and special to Jordan, all deserving of a place on the record she now has to tour. “I wanted to make sure [the album] was something I could tour and play songs from every night and not want to die,” she says, laughing.

Snail Mail’s growing fan base certainly appreciates Jordan’s efforts. After lining up hours beforehand and packing themselves tightly into the sold-out show at Toronto’s Velvet Underground, the diverse crowd demonstrates the wide-reaching appeal of Lush. Opening with a jam that phased into the single “Heat Wave," Jordan is energetic and comfortable on stage as she waves around her cherry-red Fender. Her voice shows an impressive range that most of the songs on Lush don’t have room for, especially on “Pristine,” where her voice cracks convincingly.

Keeping banter to a minimum (“I almost do no banter whatsoever,” she told us before the show), Jordan remembers to thank the excited crowd “this is like, so sick, this is crazy. Thank you guys for coming.”

Jordan introduces one song as “something that isn’t on the record,” and the crowd laughs when the opening riff to Coldplay’s “Speed of Sound” begins. The laughter quickly turns to cheers when Jordan starts singing and they realize she is serious. And sing it she does, expertly bathing the pop tune in her well-developed lo-if sound.

The standout track of the set was “Thinning,” a song from the Habit EP. This was a little surprising due to its less-adored status compared to any of the tracks on Lush, but the band seemed to really find their groove here and it proved to be the most rocking song of the night.

“Is there any better feeling than coming clean?” Jordan asks on “Pristine.” Clearly, for the Toronto Snail Mail crowd on Thursday night, there was no better feeling. We look forward to watching Jordan translate the art of coming clean into more fine indie rock as her promising career unfolds.

Image: Mike Maguire