REVIEW: the quiet revolution of lilly hiatt's 'forever'
There's something deliciously ironic about using fuzzy garage rock to chronicle domestic bliss. But that's exactly what Lilly Hiatt has done on her sixth album, Forever, a collection that proves contentment doesn't have to sound boring.
The Nashville songwriter has always operated in the spaces between genres, but this time she's traded her Americana roots for something grittier. Produced by her husband Coley Hinson in their home studio (aptly named The Mole Hill), Forever captures the peculiar vertigo of finding solid ground. It's an album about what happens after you get everything you thought you wanted – when the credits roll but life keeps going.
Take "Ghost Ship," where Hiatt's ethereal vocals float over waves of distortion as she searches for "something to sink my teeth into." It's the sound of someone realizing that stability, like happiness, isn't a destination but a practice. The track was mixed by Paul Q. Kolderie, whose fingerprints are on everything from Radiohead's The Bends to the Pixies' early work, and his touch gives these intimate confessions the scope they deserve.
The album opens with "Hidden Day," a secret slipped between Thursday and Friday, setting the tone for a record that finds magic in life's margins. Hiatt's voice – which has always carried echoes of her father John's distinctive drawl – has evolved into something uniquely her own, somewhere between Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval and the cosmic warmth of '90s alternative radio.
But it's on "Evelyn's House" where Hiatt's new direction really crystallizes. "We make good music here / And our problems, they disappear," she sings, not as an escape but as a recognition that art and love can transform the mundane into something sacred. The track builds like a polaroid developing in real time, each layer of instrumentation bringing the picture into sharper focus.
What makes Forever remarkable isn't just its sonic departure – though the shift from twang to tremolo is striking – but how it reimagines what contentment can sound like. These aren't songs about arriving; they're songs about continuing. About waking up next to someone day after day and still finding new corners to explore. About building a life while keeping enough space for mystery.
In an era where artists often mistake pain for depth, Hiatt has done something braver: she's made an album about happiness that never feels saccharine. The edges are still rough, the questions still urgent. When she sings "I shouldn't be feeling how I do" on the album's standout track, it's not a lament but a celebration of life's persistent strangeness.
Forever was recorded in pajamas and mixed by legends, crafted in the comfort of home but reaching for the stars. It's an album that proves what we should have known all along – that sometimes the most radical act is allowing yourself to be happy, and the most punk rock thing you can do is admit that love might actually last.
