ALBUM REVIEW: Lily Seabird Fills ‘Trash Mountain’ with Cracks, Folk, Grit, and Grunge

“How are we supposed to remember things?” This is the central question of “Trash Mountain (1pm),” one of two title tracks off Lily Seabird’s latest album Trash Mountain. In sum, Seabird’s songwriting is tackling the challenge of touching down when the world feels like a dumpster fire growing ever hotter and bigger, surrounding on all sides. In the way so many artists are striving for these days, Seabird feels like a truly authentic and effortless disciple of the Lucinda Williams school of singer-songwriters. With weary vocals full of character and beautiful cracks, rootsy arrangements with a touch of grit and grunge, and a sense that she can’t be anything but down to earth, Seabird’s Trash Mountain enters the canon of albums deserving of repeat listens — not just for comfort, but also to remind audiences of their humanity.

Named for the pink house on a decommissioned landfill site in Vermont where Seabird lives when she’s not on the road, Trash Mountain is filled with the kind of ephemeral snapshots that make a place really feel like home — warm blueberry pancakes, drives with friends on familiar roads, a worn pair of jeans borrowed from a loved one, and string lights across a window. It is these details and Seabird’s delivery of them that breathes life into the album.

As she explores all the things that make her feel rooted amid the chaos of loss and transition, there are times when she zeroes in with such sonic focus like on the quiet, grief-stricken “How far away,” and “It was like you were coming to wake us back up,” wherein an uncanny resemblance to her late friend haunts her. But then there are moments of the loveliest meandering, like on the tragic recollection “Albany” and the romantic blur “Trash Mountain (1am).” Whether acoustic or electric, the guitars are meaty and loud, warmed by harmonica, fiddle and lap steel.

Seabird is a keen observer of the world around her, like a historian of her own life. She carefully preserves even fleeting sightings and exchanges like beloved memories in worn photos, all the people and places she can revisit when it all becomes too much.

Lily Seabird’s Trash Mountain was released April 4, 2025 via Lame-O Records.