Snail Mail - Heat Wave

GENRE: Indie Rock • Rock

Heat Wave by Snail Mail is such a beautiful song. Somehow, the song gives off exactly the feeling of a heat wave. The band is actually a one-man project by singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan. This song comes from her debut album, Lush, which came out in March of 2018. It's a modern song about an unrequited love. The song features sharp vocals, a simple yet beautiful instrumentation, and an interesting structure.

The tonal colour of the entire song is very warm and beautiful. The instrumentation is very much in the background. It is a little bit more dull, having a lot of the high end sounds filtered out. It is also relatively quiet. The vocals, on the other hand, are a lovely contrast to the harmony in the background. They are very much in the foreground. It's very bright and sharp (tonal quality wise, not pitch-wise), having a lot of high ends accentuated. This all accumulates to help create an overall very warm colour.

"And otherwise If only sometimes Would you give it up, green eyes?"

The song uses very standard rock instruments: drum kit, electric guitar, bass guitar, and vocals. The song, simple as it is, is also really complicated. The song starts off which a guitar solo, which plays a section with part-writing (1). The electric guitar holds its own melody throughout large portions of the song, creating a nice counter-melody against the vocals. The electric guitar uses heavy distortion in different parts of the song. There is also plenty of use of a drum crash, yet it is not overwhelming. That's a result of the filtering out of the higher-end sounds. The breakdown in the first four lines of the outro is also a crucial moment of the song. At that moment, only a very basic beat, light guitar strumming, and bright vocals are heard, before it finally goes full out for the rest of the outro. It is definitely the highlight of the song.

The structure of the song is very reminiscent of older rock music. Snail Mail inserts guitar interludes throughout her entire song. The song begins with a brief guitar solo. There are other guitar-solo-interludes between the first and second verses, after the first chorus, and after the second chorus. Besides the heavy use of guitar interludes in this song, this song also ends with an outro. Another famous song that does this is Hey Jude by The Beatles. They famously dedicated the last four minutes of their seven minute song to singing their outro. It's nice to know that good music like this was influenced by good music from the past.

Overall, this is definitely a song that I recommend! The entire album is a gem, and Snail Mail definitely deserves more recognition than what she has right now.

GLOSSARY:

(1) part-writing: when one instrument plays two or more melodies (i.e. two melodies on a guitar, four melodies on a piano, etc.)