Presenting two women after my own heart: Lindsey Jordan (of indie rock solo project Snail Mail) and Maggie Nelson (author of, among many other breathtaking works, the prose-poetry collection “Bluets”). These two artists write about devotion, longing and self-revelation in ways that cut to the core. So, I’ve done the logical thing: Listed all 10 tracks on Snail Mail’s sophomore album “Valentine,” along with lyric highlights and emotional descriptors, and assigned each song a related quote from “Bluets” to guide your reading and/or listening. Happy yearning!
1. “Valentine”
Highlight: “Can’t love for us both / You’ve gotta live and I gotta go”
Tempo: Slow, then surging. Chest-banging.
Tags: Unrequited love, jealousy, young fame
Related: “‘We mainly suppose the experiential quality to be an intrinsic quality of the physical object’ — this is the so-called systematic illusion of color. Perhaps it is also that of love. But I am not willing to go there — not just yet. I believed in you.”
2. “Ben Franklin”
Highlight: ”Moved on, but nothing feels true / Sometimes I hate her just for not being you”
Tempo: Head-bobbing, bass-slapping.
Tags: Relapse, yearning, lying
Related: “And we have not yet heard enough, if anything, about the female gaze. About the scorch of it, with the eyes staying in the head.”
3. “Headlock”
Highlight: ”Can’t go out, I’m tethered to / Another world where we’re together / Are you lost in it too?”
Tempo: Walking, slowly. Swaying.
Tags: Heartbreak, daydream, alone
Related: “I admit that I may have been lonely. I know that loneliness can produce bolts of hot pain, a pain which, if it stays hot enough for long enough, can begin to simulate, or to provoke — take your pick — an apprehension of the divine. (This ought to arouse our suspicions.)”
4. “Light Blue”
Highlight: “I wanna wake up early every day / Just to be awake / In the same world as you”
Tempo: A leaf, floating down.
Tags: Adoration, devotion, unconditional love
Related: “I have been trying to place myself in a land of great sunshine, and abandon my will therewith.”
5. “Forever (Sailing)”
Highlight: “No matter where we are / I love you from the city to the stars”
Tempo: Soaring, unsteadily.
Tags: Obsession, fantasy, crushing, crashing
Related: ”To take a breath of water: does the thought panic or excite you?”
6. “Madonna”
Highlight: ”I consecrate my life to kneeling at your altar / My second sin of seven being wanting more”
Tempo: Pushing and pulling.
Tags: Pedestal, punishment
Related: “I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”
7. “c. et al.”
Highlight: ”Baby blue, I’m so behind / Can’t make sense of the faces in and out of my life”
Tempo: Running on empty.
Tags: Spiritual void, routines, dissociation
Related: ”Mostly I have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. I am still looking for the beauty in that.”
8. “Glory”
Highlight: ”You want it all, superstar / Jesus died just to save you”
Tempo: Steady, charged, desperate.
Tags: Worship, ownership, glamor, helpless
Related: “I am not interested in longing to live in a world in which I already live. I don’t want to yearn for blue things, and God forbid for any “blueness.” Above all, I want to stop missing you”
9. “Automate”
Highlight: ”I guess I couldn’t keep her fire out”
Tempo: Blundering, lurching.
Tags: Party, lust, conditional love
Related: “And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?”
10. “Mia”
Highlight: ”Isn’t it strange, the way it’s just over?”
Tempo: Mournful lullaby.
Tags: Goodbye, growing up, empty
Related: ”For to wish to forget how much you loved someone — and then, to actually forget — can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”
