Lilly Hiatt’s Style Takes a Hushed Turn on Lately
The Nashville indie-roots rocker surveys life during COVID on her fourth record

Science tells us that going out fully vaccinated in the current phase of the interminable COVID-19 pandemic is, for all intents and purposes, “safe.” Science also tells us that COVID-19 is a worldwide mass-trauma event. Spending 16 months indoors and cut off from meaningful social interaction laid us all out, especially when that eight-day stretch of “normalcy” back in June crumbled back into the familiar sensations of paranoia and fear.
Lilly Hiatt’s new record, Lately, comes to us just under two years after her last one, Walking Proof, though time dilation shrinks that period down to what feels like two weeks. Didn’t Walking Proof just come out? Hiatt hunkered down in her home, as most did through COVID’s early rampage, and her mental health took a bruising just like everyone else’s. We’re in the sweet spot of post-COVID popular culture, where films, TV shows, books and records produced during the pandemic’s worst stage will, whether intentionally or accidentally, reflect the author’s experiences under lockdown, for better and worse, with the emphasis on “worse.” Some people are solitary as a matter of habit. COVID forced them to double down on their solitude.
This gives Lately, an unfussy, straightforward album, layers of meaning: It’s an attempt at reconciling with imposed isolation and a display of solidarity for Hiatt’s similarly isolated friends, family, neighbors and fellow Nashville residents. Hiatt speaks to that collective loneliness starting on the first three songs, “Simple,” “Been” and “Lately,” each expressing different pieces of what Hiatt’s gone through during the pandemic in totally different ways; they’re related, but unique. In fact, the sequencing of these tracks captures the American zeitgeist in reverse: relief, anger and longing, a reminder that writing good songs is important but putting them in the right order comes a close second.