In the winter of 2019, I found myself in a strange place. I had realized the career I had built my life around was making me miserable, so in a sudden act of self-preservation, I quit. This left me with no job, five thousand dollars, and a car. I did the only reasonable thing you can do in that scenario: hit the road. For three months, I was loose on the Midwest, meeting new people, seeing the parts of the country that usually remain hidden, and eating out of gas stations. During this sabbatical, one album had total dominance of the airwaves in my car: “Lush” by Snail Mail. Even today, the opening riff of “Pristine” tears me through space and time back to the driver's seat of my '97 town car, lost on a back road somewhere between nowhere and everywhere. So, imagine my surprise when I found out the band has an EP that outperforms “Lush” in every way.
“Habit” was originally written in 2015 when Snail Mail frontwoman Lindsay Jordan was just fifteen years old. It was a hasty job, as most of our first EPs likely were; however, unlike the first EP I ever wrote, this one was actually worth listening to. It rocked so hard, in fact, that a year later, Snail Mail would find themselves in the studio recording it for Sister Polygon Records. The recording process was hindered from the very beginning by a bout with bronchitis that Jordan wouldn’t recover fully from until after work on the record had wrapped up. Despite this, “Habit” released to a warm critical reception, garnering four stars and seven out of tens all around; something I find particularly impressive considering the last time I had bronchitis, I spent the whole time on my couch shivering and hallucinating while a fever tried to turn my brain into cottage cheese. So what happened? How did a highly successful debut EP like “Habit” become a shadow lurking in the background of Snail Mail’s discography?
Well, for one thing, it’s technically not a full-length album. Let’s be honest, most casual fans don’t listen to EPs, and those casual fans are the majority of any band's fanbase. Most listeners want to hear the hits; play “Pristine” and “Valentine,” and then move on to the next thing. Now I say technically because it is seven songs and thirty minutes long, but it was not given the kind of marketing a full album release would get, which was another massive problem.
“Habit” came out, did well, then fell off the face of the earth because the music scene had not evolved to a point where it could keep it alive on its own. You need to remember that it came out in 2016 and was released by an independent label. That means that there is no TikTok to circulate the songs on, and while music had already been shared on the internet for decades by that point, no other site or app has had the sheer power to make or break artists that TikTok wields. There is a reason singles today are written specifically to mine the social media service’s algorithm for views. Without that, Sister Polygon Records had to deal with the old gods of the music industry, radio DJs, and promoters. The ones in the days of yesteryear who decided what got airtime and what didn’t. Without them, “Habit” would have remained a small-time release with a few thousand streams on Spotify. Unfortunately, without the readily accessible short-form exposure TikTok could give it today, the EP vanished as soon as the powers that be stopped pushing it.
More than anything else, however, I blame “Lush.” The band’s debut album was nearly perfect. When it dropped, it received all-around praise from critics and fans alike. To this day, it is one of my favorite albums of all time. So, when this new album came out, those who were still spinning “Habit” dropped it for the new release. “Lush” got better promotion, better reviews, and better circulation than “Habit.” As Snail Mail became known as the band that wrote “Pristine,” the oldies were left behind, “Thinning” being the one single off the EP to still make it into setlists today.
“Habit” got shafted; there is no other way to put it. It’s an amazing record that was widely enjoyed but never got the traction it needed to become a classic. It was one of the last victims of the old way of operating the music business. If it had been released in the year 2025, it would have rocked the internet, launching the band into overnight success. But the timing just wasn’t right, and while the EP has seen a bit of a comeback in recent years, it still flounders in comparison to the band's LPs. If you haven’t heard “Habit” yet, take the time to listen to it today. It’s a fantastic piece of alternative rock that captures a moment in the 2010s when the upbeat poppy alt scene was tipping towards the grunge-tinged shoegaze-heavy scene we see today.
