Lilly Hiatt will release Forever on January 31, 2025 via New West Records. The 9-song set is Hiatt’s first album in four years and was produced by her husband, Coley Hinson, and mixed by Paul Q. Kolderie (Radiohead, Pixies, Hole). Forever is a raw, unvarnished work of love and trust that walks the line between alt-rock muscle and singer-songwriter sensitivity. It is a bold, guitar-driven, exploration of maturity and adulthood that grapples with growth and change, escape and anxiety, self-loathing and self-love, and the songs are intensely vulnerable, full of diaristic snapshots. Already met with critical acclaim, Uncut Magazine named it their “Americana Album of the Month,” exclaiming “Hiatt has rarely rocked harder than on Forever.” MOJO said “Stability and appreciation of life’s little victories have rarely sounded more delightful” while Nashville Lifestyles magazine said “Lilly Hiatt steps into the bold, punchy future on her fourth album, Forever…her creative re-awakening captures the excitement of a new start.”
Today, PopMatters premiered the video for the new single “Kwik-E-Mart.” Of the song, Hiatt says, “Being a troubadour, you spend a lot of time snacking out of gas stations. My husband and I also love to go to shows then get little treats at the corner store. Some of our sweetest moments have happened at those spots. Another drop D tuning and I also mention my friend Aaron Lee Tasjan's record Silver Tears, which is a personal fave." Of the Joshua Shoemaker-directed video, she says, “I had a good time with Joshua filming this. We were freezing and hanging at various parking lots to get some footage. It’s fun to keep a light-hearted improvisation to things, and that’s pretty much what we did.” Share the “Kwik-E-Mart” video HERE.
SPIN previously premiered the video for the album’s first single, the driving “Shouldn’t Be.” The song meditates on the universal need to stand in your beliefs without requiring the validation of others. Hiatt says, “I wrote ‘Shouldn’t Be’ after a Mudhoney concert and it was the first song I recorded for the album. I was also thinking a little of Olivia Rodrigo when writing it. It’s a song about standing in your truth.” Relix also previously shared the album highlight, “Thoughts,” as well, calling it “a capsule of growth capturing the realities of adulthood: anxiety, self-criticism, and the unwavering balance of acknowledging self-worth.” Hiatt says, “We were almost done making this record, and I was trying to come up with a few more tunes and get ready to get on the road. I had massive anxieties over things that were not real and knew if I just got behind the wheel and drove, it would all melt away. Also, getting older is trippy…one day you wake up and it’s happening!”
Born in Los Angeles and raised in Tennessee, Hiatt first earned buzz with a pair of early solo records before breaking out with 2017’s Trinity Lane. That record helped her earn dates with the likes of John Prine, Drive-By Truckers, Margo Price, and more. NPR called it “courageous and affecting,” while Rolling Stone hailed it as “the most cohesive and declarative statement of the young songwriter’s career.” Hiatt delivered on the album’s promise with her similarly acclaimed 2020 follow-up, Walking Proof, and unable to tour due to the pandemic, quickly returned to the studio again for 2021’s stripped-down Lately, which Uncut proclaimed to be “captivating.” When it was finally time to get back on the road, though, she found herself feeling overwhelmed and bewildered. The world seemed to be changing faster than she could keep up with, and rather than embracing what should have been her triumphant return, Hiatt instead began retreating from everything she’d worked so hard to build. “I was on the phone with a friend who said she wasn’t sure where I’d been,” Hiatt recalls. “I realized I wasn’t too sure of that either.” The search for answers—where she’s been, who she’s become, what it all means—lies at the heart of Hiatt’s striking Forever.
“I fell in love, got married, adopted a dog, all the things I’d always dreamed of doing,” Hiatt reflects. “But I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble through it all, just constantly critiquing myself to the point where I became so paralyzed I could hardly leave home.” She tried therapy and antidepressants, talked to friends and family, wrote dozens and dozens of songs about her feelings, all in the hopes of quieting her racing mind. “There was this intensity where I felt so jacked up all the time,” she explains. “Eventually I just realized that my life was passing me by, that the love I was living in required presence to accept. So I started doing the little things you have to do to show up for the people in your life: listen, grow, change. I learned to expand my world.” Hiatt left the bustle of Nashville for a more rural setting just outside the city and scrapped all the material she’d been working on, starting from scratch in pursuit of something that would resonate more with the new chapter she was embarking upon.
Hiatt and Hinson worked quickly in their new home, tackling the writing and recording of each song one-at-a-time from the ground up and sending the material off to Kolderie to mix as they finished them. “Paul brought so much enthusiasm and dimension to the project,” Hiatt explains. “Every time we had a song tracked, we’d share it with him and then he’d get really excited about it, which was really affirming and encouraged us to turn right around and get started on the next one.” That excitement is plain to hear on Forever.
Lilly Hiatt has also announced her initial North American tour dates in support of Forever. Launching January 31 at the Blue Room at Third Man Records in Nashville, TN, the tour will feature stops at Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn, Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco, Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles, the Continental Club in Houston, and more. She will also appear on the Outlaw Country Cruise setting sail on February 22nd and just prior to the launch of the Forever tour, Hiatt will appear at the 30A Songwriters Festival on January 17. Please see tour dates below.
Lilly Hiatt’s Forever will be available across digital retailers, on compact disc, and standard black vinyl. A limited, clear green color edition autographed by Lilly Hiatt as well as an autographed compact disc edition will be available at Independent Retailers and can be pre-ordered NOW via NEW WEST RECORDS.
Lilly Hiatt Forever Track Listing:
1. Hidden Day
2. Shouldn’t Be
3. Ghost Ship
4. Somewhere
5. Evelyn’s House
6. Forever
7. Man
8. Kwik-E-Mart
9. Thoughts
Lilly Hiatt On Tour:
1/17-19/25 30A Songwriters Festival, FL
1/31/2025 The Blue Room, Nashville, TN
2/5/2025 Bijou Theater, Knoxville, TN
2/22-2/28/25 Outlaw Country Cruise
3/6/25 The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA
3/7/25 Pour House, Charleston, SC
3/8/25 The Evening Muse, Charlotte, NC
3/9/25 The Pinhook, Durham, NC
3/11/25 Silk City Diner, Philadelphia, PA
3/12/25 The Middle East, Cambridge, MA
3/13/25 Baby's All Right, Brooklyn, NY
3/14/25 DC9, Washington, DC
3/15/25 Mr. Smalls Theatre, Millvale, PA
3/16/25 Beachland Tavern, Cleveland, OH
3/19/25 Natalie's Grandview, Columbus, OH
3/20/25 Off Broadway, St. Louis, MO
3/21/25 Duke's, Indianapolis, IN
3/22/25 Fitzgerald's, Berwyn, IL
3/23/25 Turf Club, St. Paul MN
3/24/25 Vinyl Cup Records, Des Moines, IA
3/28/25 Sunset Tavern, Seattle, WA
3/29/25 Trout Lake Hall, Trout Lake, WA
3/30/25 The Showdown, Portland, OR
4/1/25 Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, CA
4/3/25 The Wayfarer, Costa Mesa, CA
4/4/25 Permanent Records Roadhouse, LA, CA
4/5/25 The Dirty Drummer. Phoenix, AZ
4/8/25 The Continental Club, Houston, TX
4/9/25 Meridian, Buda, TX
4/10/25 Magnolia Motor Lounge, Fort Worth, TX
4/11/25 White Water Tavern, Little Rock, AR
4/12/25 Hernando's Hideaway, Memphis, TN
