Liz Phair & Sleater-Kinney: The Flannel and The Fury 2026

Performers

• 

  Liz Phair
• 

  Sleater-Kinney
• 

  Snail Mail

  On ‘Ricochet,’ the third album from Snail Mail, out now on Matador Records, Lindsey

  Jordan returns to assert herself as a generational songwriter, clear-eyed and

  honest as ever. Time has passed, but she remains a sensitive soul, and here her

  incisive introspection is tethered to newly expansive and hypnotic melodies and

  ornate string arrangements. While writing ‘Ricochet,’ Jordan found herself

  fixating on concerns she’d previously pushed out of her mind, namely death and

  what happens after.

  Jordan’s early music largely dealt with matters of the heart, a territory that she

  tried to step beyond on ‘Ricochet.’ “Misery feels safe to write about because I am

  good at it,” she says, “but I’m not bathing in my own agony anymore.” To feel the

  pain of everything and then nothing is a lonesome contradiction. ‘Ricochet’ is a

  record about being caught in this whirlpool, but Jordan’s music has never been

  so transcendent. The luminous opener, “Tractor Beam,” is driven by jangly

  guitars, but is ultimately about dissociation and “feeling othered while

  acknowledging that you’re spending a lot of your time and energy figuring out

  how to float away.”

  When it came time to record the songs bouncing around in her head, Jordan

  turned to a friend, Aron Kobayashi Ritch, the bassist and producer of the fuzzy

  indie rock band Momma. Jordan describes the process as refreshing, trusting,

  and comfortable. “I felt like an equal voice,” she says. “He was as interested in

  my decisions as I was in his.”

  These 11 songs are colored by the anxiety of watching life slip through your

  fingers, as well as the vulnerability of loving deeply rather than frenetically.

  Ultimately, ‘Ricochet’ is an album about realizing—and accepting—that the world

  still turns no matter what is going on in your tiny life.