{"id":45984,"date":"2020-10-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-10-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/walking-proof\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T11:20:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T11:20:09","slug":"walking-proof","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/walking-proof\/","title":{"rendered":"Walking Proof"},"content":{"rendered":"

The beautiful thing about Americana is that it\u2019s a big tent\u2014there\u2019s room for artists who lean toward country, or folk, or roots-rock, or blues, and maybe especially those who dabble in all of the above. The real test is in the songwriting; as we\u2019ve seen again and again<\/a>, strong songs performed by solid players will always stand up in a way that isn\u2019t necessarily the case with the reverse. <\/p>\n

Lilly Hiatt comes by her songwriting skills honestly; she\u2019s paid dues aplenty over the course of the past decade and three increasingly sophisticated and well-received albums. And while some might speculate that she\u2019s enjoyed an advantage as the daughter of one of the genre\u2019s iconic songwriting talents (John Hiatt<\/a>), like so many second-generation performers, it\u2019s more likely true that Lilly Hiatt has been burdened by the weight of expectations.<\/p>\n

Whether or not that\u2019s actually the case, you don\u2019t hear that kind of weight at all here. Instead, Walking Proof<\/i> offers as free and natural and pure and incisive a set of songs as you could ever hope to find, full of sharp-elbowed wisdom and hard-won insight. It\u2019s the work of a mature artist with an instinctual understanding of how to write to her own strengths.<\/p>\n

One of her strengths is the ability to adapt her very pretty voice to a range of different song styles, a talent she wastes no time putting to work. On airy, elegiac opener \u201cRae,\u201d her vocals are delicate and achingly pretty; then \u201cP-Town\u201d arrives in a blaze of big electric guitars and thrumming Hammond and she steps up to meet the song\u2019s muscle. Here and throughout, her lyrics are stream-of-consciousness and rather impressionistic, yet filled with striking details and images (\u201cTennis shoes in a London sky\u201d in the former; \u201cPacing circles on your balcony\u201d in the latter).<\/p>\n

From there Hiatt mixes things up nicely, moving from tart rocker \u201cLittle Believer\u201d into thoughtful mid-tempo number \u201cSome Kind Of Drug\u201d (with Daddy John on harmony vocals) into the lilting, thoroughly charming \u201cCandy Lunch.\u201d The latter\u2019s lyric is one of her finest, whimsical verses giving way to piercing self-knowledge at the chorus: \u201cCuz nothing seems to go better when I \/ Grab onto anything too tight, too tight \/ I can\u2019t count all of the times \/ I said I\u2019d never show my cards \/ But here you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title track is as close as Hiatt gets to pure country, a steady-on, rather philosophical number featuring Amanda Shires on fiddle and harmony vocals. Shires sticks around for one more to provide harmonies on \u201cDrawl,\u201d a country-folk number offering kind commiseration and gentle advice to a troubled crush. The guitars and tempo ramp up again for the twinkly \u201cBrightest Star,\u201d another tune offering support to a friend in need of it.<\/p>\n

The songs only get stronger late in the game. \u201cNever Play Guitar\u201d is an album highlight, a bouncy barroom rocker about the eternal search for a quiet place to play guitar and write. Likewise for the airy country-rocker \u201cMove,\u201d featuring Luke Schneider on pedal steel and one of Hiatt\u2019s sharper lyrics, about facing up to your problems rather than running away (\u201cYou\u2019re gonna have to learn how to deal with it \/ The only thing you know how to do is move\u201d). Closer \u201cScream\u201d is a dreamy ballad whose declaration-of-independence lyrics read like a raging rocker (\u201dI want someplace that\u2019s just my own to scream \/ And I ain\u2019t slowing down for nobody\u201d), but land that much more powerfully for the restraint Hiatt exercises as she gradually cranks up the tension at the song\u2019s core.<\/p>\n

When iTunes rolled past the end of Lilly Hiatt\u2019s Walking Proof<\/i> and right into Linda Ronstadt\u2019s Greatest Hits<\/i>, I had to smile; Hiatt has a similar kind of crossover appeal, but more importantly a similar kind of fire that can\u2019t be faked\u2014and unlike Ronstadt, she writes her own material. Walking Proof<\/i> is the work of a mature, driven singer-songwriter who knows her craft and knows herself. This album brims with smart, witty, big-hearted songs, sung by an artist who believes in them, and convinced me to believe in her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":34153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[10564],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-45984","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-lilly-hiatt","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45984"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/45984\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=45984"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=45984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}