(Self released, digital)
We should all feel a certain envy toward people who can still write songs from a place of youth — the good kind of envy that reminds you of a time when your biggest feelings practically exploded out of your body, when heartbreak was bottomless and every new experience felt like a revelation. For most of us, that insatiable vulnerability fades as we age. But not for Lilly Golden.
On Valentine’s Day this year, the 2025 Bennington College grad packed her life into a Subaru Outback and drove 10,000 miles through 33 states in five months, challenging herself to write a song in every city she visited. Her new record, North Star (Live), recorded at Damon Hall in her hometown of Hartland and released in September, was born from that adventure. Its 14 songs retain the openheartedness and inner-child wonder that adulthood so often asks us to surrender.
The opening track, “Cherry Street,” is breathless. Over mostly major strummed acoustic guitar, Golden’s vocal runs tumble into one another, beautiful and frantic, underscoring the chorus: “I’m here for a second, then I’m gone again.” Written in Macon, Ga., the song captures the fleeting intimacy of travel — making a friend for life you might never see again, then watching the rain roll in as it’s time to leave. There’s something brave about opening an album with a song about leaving: Before we know where we’re going, Golden asks us to reckon with what we’re walking away from.
“Loveless Motel,” meanwhile, had me picturing Golden on the Sunset Strip, swapping stories with an aging rocker about her ’70s band. Then I learned she wrote it in Nashville, at a place actually called the Loveless Motel. Close enough. “To find yourself a heaven, you’ve gotta raise a little hell,” she sings, her voice lilting somewhere between happy and sad. It slips between chest voice and falsetto, almost like a yo-yo, giving the song a lovely but slightly unsettled quality. There’s something uneasy beneath all that prettiness.
By track five, “Good Ol’ Lonestar,” Golden has upended any assumptions about her sound. Written in Austin, Texas, it trades the record’s pop-Americana for the old-school country of Patsy Cline and Johnny Cash. Built around little more than a fingerpicked bass line, it gives Golden room to sit with a question that seems to follow her from place to place: “Lone star, lone star / tell me, where is home?”
The title track, “North Star,” written in Chicago, feels like Golden bringing all the lessons of her travels home. After spending the album moving from city to city in search of something, she arrives at an answer that feels both simple and hard-won: Home isn’t necessarily a place. It’s a feeling. And sometimes, it’s a person.
“I’ve been traveling for months / I’m trying to change my address,” she sings, before eventually arriving at the song’s quiet revelation: “Home becomes a feeling, not a place / You took me home today.”
The applause after each song is a stark reminder that, “Holy shit! These songs are being performed live!” But unlike live albums by the likes of Joni Mitchell or Lauryn Hill, the applause is cut short before we get to hear the banter and reflections between the performer and the audience. I found myself wanting to know the stories behind the songs, their secrets, how they changed her. You know — stuff you only get to hear at live shows.
Still, Golden tucks enough of those stories inside her lyrics to make us feel like we traveled with her, which I think is the mark of an excellent songwriter. On North Star (Live), home becomes as complicated a pursuit as home really is: something we tend to find many times over by loving, leaving and returning to again and again.
North Star (Live) is available on major streaming services and lillygoldenbandcamp.com. Visit lillygoldenmusic.com for photos, lyrics and little notes from her cross-country venture.
This article appears in Winter Preview • 2026.
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