MAGNET Exclusive: Full-Album Premiere Of Lilly Hiatt’s “Forever”

With help from husband Coley Hinson and Fort Apache Studios lynchpin Paul Kolderie, Lilly Hiatt finds compelling common ground between post-punk and Americana on her sixth release, Forever (New West). Much like the jolt fellow East Coast studio legend John Agnello gave Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on MAGNET’s 2017 Album Of The Year, Out In The Storm, Kolderie helps bring bottom-end muscle to some of Hiatt’s most efficient, emotionally direct songwriting to date. Rarely has such an intimate batch of tunes sounded so boisterously in-your-face.

Here’s what Hiatt had to say about Forever:

“It was written and recorded one track at a time with Coley. After scrapping the 20 songs or so I’d written over the past few years, I wanted to get to the heart of things. I had a great talk with a friend on the phone, and she mentioned she just wasn’t sure where I’d been. I realized I wasn’t certain of that either. It’d been a foggy few years after 2020, and the pieces were just starting to be picked up. I’d fallen in love, gotten married, had a dog, a house—things I’d always dreamed of. But it took me quite some time to accept that as my life. For a bit, I felt like an outsider watching myself stumble though everything. I was constantly critiquing myself, to the point where I could hardly leave the house for a bit. 

“Then I realized my life was passing me by, and the love I was living in required presence to accept. I started to do the little things you have to do to just show up for people: listen, grow, change, write, get outside of my own problems. I became an aunt, which opened a whole new part of my heart. I turned 40, which was awesome and weird. Anyhow, I’m not a kid anymore, and I’m trying to be accountable for my part of things and show up for the people I love. Time is flying, and I want to be here for it all, rather than lost in my thoughts all the time.”

1) “Hidden Day”
“I went over to my friend Scot Sax’s house, and we started talking about how annoying our phones are and how we need to create an extra day in the week just to dream a little. This is what came out of it. A shoutout to Osa Coffee Roasters on the East Side!”

2) “Shouldn’t Be”
“I wrote this after going to a Mudhoney concert with my husband. I showed it to him immediately, and it was the first song we recorded for the album. I was also thinking a little of Olivia Rodrigo when writing it.”

3) “Ghost Ship”
“Over the years, I’ve seen friends change their beliefs and I’ve changed my own. Some have gone far from me because of this, but usually we’re looking for the same thing.”

4) “Somewhere”
“Written in the dead of winter when I had cabin fever. I was imagining escaping the news and taking a trip to some tropical place with my love. Also, I was getting really into dropped-D tuning because I was a bit spent on the standard.”

5) “Evelyn’s House”
“I wrote this in our old house in Cleveland Park, where we made multiple records. It’s where we learned to be married and work through our traumas via music.”

6) “Forever”
“I went to play Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, and they put us up in an awesome place called Hotel Kabuki. I was so excited to be in California, and after our set and walking around San Fran a little, I wrote this song in the shower with my Rickenbacker … Neither were on.”

7) “Man”
“This is the first song written for the record in my old apartment off Trinity Lane. When my husband came over, I knew he was my soulmate—and that’s the truth.”

8) “Kwik-E-Mart”
“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 after. Some of our sweetest moments have happened at those spots. Another dropped D—and also a mention of my friend Aaron Lee Tasjan’s record Silver Tears … a personal fave.”

9) “Thoughts”
“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 I knew that 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!”