There’s a moment in Snail Mail’s new single ‘Tractor Beam’ where everything seems to lift, not in triumph, but in escape. It’s a feeling that runs through the track like a current, a quiet urge to detach, to drift just far enough away from yourself to make sense of what’s happening.
Debuted on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the song arrives as the opening statement from Lindsey Jordan’s forthcoming record Ricochet, and it wastes no time establishing its emotional coordinates. Built on buoyant, jangling guitar lines and elevated by sweeping string arrangements from the Metropolis Ensemble, ‘Tractor Beam’ balances lift with weight, melody with unease.
Jordan’s vocal sits right at that intersection. There’s anthemic clarity to it, but also a sense of distance, as if she’s narrating from just outside the moment. The song circles dissociation, that disorienting split between body and mind, drawing in part from the unsettling emotional terrain of Mysterious Skin. It’s not treated as spectacle, but as something quieter and more persistent, a coping mechanism that arrives uninvited and lingers.
Visually, ‘Tractor Beam’ takes a different route. Shot on a New Jersey sheep farm and co-directed by Jordan and Elsie Richter, the accompanying video leans into a surreal, almost pastoral absurdity. Animals wander in and out of frame, Jordan moves through it all with a loose, unforced presence, and the now-recurring two-headed lamb motif threads its way through the imagery. It’s playful on the surface, but carries the same underlying tension as the track itself, a lightness that doesn’t quite settle.
Following earlier singles ‘My Maker’ and ‘Dead End’, which paired grunge-heavy textures with sharply defined melodic lines, ‘Tractor Beam’ feels more expansive, less tethered to a single sonic identity. It opens outward, allowing space for orchestration and atmosphere without losing the emotional directness that has defined Jordan’s writing since the beginning.
Snail Mail will be heading out on tour soon, tickets HERE.
