Lately

Album review

On "Simple," from her fifth album, Lately, Lilly Hiatt sings, "I take a picture in my mind to make it last"—but that's also exactly what her songs are like: snapshots of sweet (or bittersweet) everyday moments that comfort when you summon them up later. Written about the experience of visiting her family for the first time after the horror, sadness and confusion of a lengthy pandemic lockdown, "Simple" evokes that afternoon with sun-drenched lap steel and a conversational story: "My dad turned on the speakers/ It was my brother's birthday/ I hugged my mom and sister." While some lockdown records are full of dramatic proclamations, Hiatt manages to chronicle how life kept going on, just on a much smaller, often lonely scale. Sometimes the mental snapshots are pleasantly hazy, in that way where you remember things through the lens of emotion rather than reality: "I can't watermark the memory, it changes with the moon," she sings. Indeed, there is a beautiful economy to Hiatt's language, right down to the way she chooses "When will the last tear fall?" rather than "last teardrop" on "The Last Tear." That Emmylou-esque slow burn pleasantly meanders on the first verse and chorus, as Hiatt weighs the uncertain future of a relationship, before, boom, she and the music kick in with a new determination. It's a message you feel as much as hear. There's something fascinating about the contradiction of Hiatt's musical style—raw and sometimes thorny, so loose-limbed as to sound made up on the spot—and her truly pretty, tender voice. You hear it in the Westerberg-style guitar of "Peach" and the sweetheart way she sings, "But I can't be the only bruised peach/ Sometimes you were hard to reach" (she sounds practically angelic on the bridge). There's an ease and authenticity to her work that, even as the daughter of the legendary John Hiatt, extends beyond her cool-Nashville genealogy. The fantastic "Face" combines lanky honky-tonk guitar, shuffling drums and a Big Star melody, while Hiatt hits an early Maria McKee vibe; it all sounds so natural and unpracticed, you feel like you are right there in the studio with her and the band. "Lately" trembles with nervous emotion and the joyous, warped keyboards of an old carnival ride. "Been" has a stark, Lucinda Williams vibe. And Hiatt lays down a plainspoken but wither admonishment on the jangling "Better": "You say you wanna do things with your life/ Baby, don't we all/ Turn on a fucking porch light/ And answer my call." When she sings, alongside a lonely tambourine on "Ride," "Fast down the pike/ Sunset how we like/ End of the day/ Not much left to say," it's like she doesn't know her own power. © Shelly Ridenour/Qobuz