shannon lay
I Write the Songs…
Listen to “Valentine,” the title cut on the latest album from Matador recording artist Snail Mail, and you feel transported back to the early years of Lollapalooza, if not earlier. The song opens with waves of ‘80s synth and staccato bursts of Police-style guitar, then segues into a crunchy power-pop chorus that Billy Corgan might have scripted. Snail Mail grew up in the D.C. suburbs as Lindsey Jordan. She is 23. Surely, she is not a Billy Corgan fan. You ask anyway. “I have a Smashing Pumpkins tattoo,” she replies. She holds it up to the Zoom camera. Spin the latest albums by Lindsey or Marissa Nadler or Shannon Lay, and you will hear the fruits of a modern singer-songwriter movement, a string of masterful recordings by young, mostly female artists who grew up listening to their parents’ ...
Shannon Lay Is Doing This for Herself
“Geist” is the German word for “spirit.” Indie-folk songwriter Shannon Lay stumbled upon this word as she was leafing through a vintage music terminology book, and the word struck her. After she discovered its meaning, she realized that the word epitomized the experience of making her fifth record, so she decided to name the album Geist. “The idea of spirit flows evenly through this record,” Lay tells SPIN over Zoom. “As I was making it, I was going through an intense moment and seeing the way that the human spirit finds peace in all of this chaos. It was really cool to admire how resilient we can be.” With Geist, Lay has come closer to finding her true frequency. She embraced her insecurities and found comfort in discomfort, especially as a folk artist coming out of the punk scene. Lay us...
