Lilli Lewis - All Is Forgiven

On All Is Forgiven, New Orleans singer, composer, and pianist Lilli Lewis turns a season of dislocation into an expansive meditation on defiance, tenderness, grief, forgiveness, and return. Released by Righteous Babe Records, the album moves freely through folk, rock, soul, gospel, and the musical language of Lewis’ adopted Louisiana home.

“You don’t write a whole record called All Is Forgiven without having plenty to forgive,” Lewis says. Yet these songs are less concerned with recounting old injuries than with discovering what becomes possible after them. Written during a period of profound transition, the collection traces an inward journey toward self-acceptance, humility, and renewed faith in love.

The album opens with “Sin Eater,” featuring Dirty Dozen Brass Band co-founder Kirk Joseph on sousaphone and a vocal passage from Lewis’ great-grandfather, the Reverend Dr. William J. Faulkner. Its fierce command—“Take your sin and run”—gives way to the defiant joy of “Happy Enough,” co-written by Lewis’ wife, Liz Hogan, and the buoyant pop-rock affirmation of the title track.

At the album’s center, the understated ballad “Just One Ride” begins a more introspective passage. “If You Really Mattered,” written for Lewis’ cousin Willie Spence, considers what radical self-acceptance might release in us. “Possible” continues that inquiry, moving through imperfection, grace, and the deliberate choice to love.

The tender French-language waltz “Ciel Éternel,” translated with Jamaican composer and lyricist Craig Bloomfield, is a lullaby addressed to Lewis’ younger self. It is answered by the elemental, swamp-rooted “Drink This Water Child” before the album closes with Hogan’s “Firefly,” a spacious invocation of love, renewal, and the courage to illuminate a darkened sky.

Produced by Lilli Lewis and Mark Bingham, All Is Forgiven brings together a wide musical community while remaining deeply intimate. It is a record about surviving rupture without allowing rupture to have the final word—and about the songs that sometimes find us before we know how much we need them.