Sometimes there’s a reverence among musicians that doesn’t always translate to press cycles or playlists. It’s quieter, more instinctive more about a kind of shared fluency. That’s what comes through on Snail Mail’s new cover of “Two Legs,” a song by This Is Lorelei’s Nate Amos. The original version is twitchy, endearing, and faintly self-sabotaging: part electro-folk, part mid-2000s college-radio static, like a folk song filtered through a broken laptop fan. Snail Mail (Lindsey Jordan), leans into the song’s nervous system. She’s always had a gift for sounding slightly inconvenienced by her own emotions, and on “Two Legs” she turns that skill into something closer to alchemy. Her voice—cool, precise, and just a little bruised around the edges—slips into the song like it’s always lived there.
She pulls the melody into focus without sanding down its strangeness, a sort of reverse-remastering that retains the feel of the original while adding Jordan’s own personality to the mix. Amos has said that Jordan was the first person he thought of when the idea of a deluxe edition came up, and you can hear why. They’re operating on similar frequencies: allergic to over-polish, fluent in the performance of awkwardness, and devastating when they decide to commit to a melody—and commit they do
The Fat Angel Sings 