Folk rock has always been my favorite kind of music. From my early years listening to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young to my love of The Weakerthans, Ben Kweller, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes and Andrew Bird, I’m drawn to the pastoral quality of stripped-down songs and simple themes.
Burlington, Vermont-native Lily Seabird has quickly climbed to the top of that list with her third album, “Trash Mountain,” released Friday, April 4, 2025.
“Songwriting is meditation for me,” she said in a release. “It’s the way I work through things and make sense of the world. Being on tour so much, I’ve been writing more just to understand what’s happening around me.”
Seabird opens the album with “Harmonia,” using simple strumming before breaking into a full-band sound. The washed-out instrumentation mirrors the longing in her voice.
The first title track, “Trash Mountain (1pm),” is very Kweller-esque with its foot-stomping rhythm and harmonica. Fittingly, it was written after a grueling month of touring, including 15 shows in one week at SXSW.
“Coming home is not always easy for me,” she said about the track. “Sometimes I feel like I am a way better version of myself when I’m in the chaos on the road. When I get home, I tend to spiral.”
“When I was walking down my street
I saw my neighbor staring at the sun
And there was a pair of Nikes on the wire
And kids were playing on Trash Mountain”
She adopts a more Elliott Smith-inspired fingerpicking style on “Sweepstake,” pairing her voice with reverb to give it an ethereal effect.
“Blueberry pancakes and I walk out to the car,
We took the long way cause who cares how far
Through the mountains where the wildflowers start
In the tall grass that’s how I know who you are”
The album marks a shift in songwriting for Seabird.
“In the past, I used to come to songwriting when I was in crisis,” she said. “Only recently have I come to songwriting when I am feeling other things beyond emergency and disruption.”
Seabird is in no rush to deliver her message. I love the extended jams scattered throughout the album, like the piano on “Arrow” by Sam Atallah. Tied for the longest track at 5 minutes and 26 seconds, it fills every second with creative brilliance.
“Well, it’s not so black and white
Why loving you has made me so sad
I gave myself this black eye
Well, loving you didn’t make me do that
Well, there exists this fine line
On either side of it, pain and beauty
I don’t want anyone else
To stay in my heart just like an arrow
Like an arrow”
Her longtime touring band—guitarist Greg Freeman, bassist Nina Cates and drummer Zack James—appears sparingly on the album. Additional instrumentation includes Will Seeders on fiddle and violin, and Rick Soszynski on lap steel guitar.
Only Atallah and Seabird appear on “How Far Away,” showing her leaning fully into her strength as a singer-songwriter.
She revisits the emotional aftermath of a friend’s suicide, a topic that featured prominently on her 2024 album “Atlas,” with the track “It Was Like You Were Coming to Wake Us Back Up.”
The acoustic-led “Albany” has Seabird longing for the freedom of simpler times with friends.
The flip side of the title track, “Trash Mountain (1am),” takes on a darker tone, both sonically and lyrically, as Seabird takes an evening stroll, spotting bottles of Tanqueray and purple string lights over a slow-moving roots rock rhythm.
“We walk these streets we’ve come to know
Memories live on in them after the snow
Is all melted and gone
Garbage covers the ground
And you pull a flower from the weeds and you spin me around.”
The album closes with “The Flight,” with Seabird and a piano together again.
“But everyone wants to say their peace, they want to say what they need,
But to me it all just feels a little self-important”
Across nine tracks spanning 35 minutes, Lily Seabird makes waves with her meditative, emotional songwriting on “Trash Mountain.”
Upcoming Tour Dates:
- May 15 – with Mikaela Davis at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- May 16 – with Mikaela Davis at Songbyrd in Washington, DC
- June 5 – with Mary St. Mary and Shannen Moser at Ortieb’s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- June 6 – with hemlock at Night Club 101 in New York City
Get “Trash Mountain” on Bandcamp, Amazon, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, Deezer and qobuz.
