Having just come off a North American tour and shows in Europe, Snail Mail is on a roll with her concert streak! Today, she took on Fuji Rock with White Stage being as packed as we have ever seen it. Even during mic check, the previously spread out audience drew closer to get a taste of what the upcoming performance would be like.

The American indie solo project Snail Mail is headed by Lindsey Jordan, a surprisingly young musician considering how long she has been making and releasing music. Snail Mail began in 2015 when Jordan was only 16 years old, and the band quickly grew in popularity after it began. Now Jordan has released two full albums with her newest album Valentine being heavily featured in her Fuji Rock set.

She began the set with the title track that opens the album, Valentine. We begin with a slow building of instruments on top of liquid smooth vocals until the song bursts forth with angst for the chorus. Following the chronology of her album, the set continued with the album’s second track Ben Franklin. The rest of the set followed its own flow with a mix of older songs and new.

Listening to Jordan’s performances of her old songs today, you can see how the artist has stylistically changed by comparing her sound now to the original studio recordings. Particularly with pieces like Speaking Terms and Pristine, Jordan now opts for less talk-singing to show off her trained voice. She also chooses to switch up the older songs by making tweaks to the original rhythm or ending notes of certain phrases.

The whole performance was immensely charming with Jordan chatting and even making turkey noises back and forth with the audience. (Or maybe they were having a conversation, I’m not sure because I don’t personally speak turkey.) The only thing that took away from the experience was the numerous guitar swaps that halted the set between songs. Having to go pass off each guitar and plug it in is an inevitability and certainly the only thing they could do given the circumstances. It stands to say that if Snail Mail is already putting on stellar concerts with these restraints, their potential is incredible.