'For Now, Forever' by Liana Warren

For Now, Forever

From the opening hum of freeway noise in “Tiny Sprout,” 'For Now, Forever' introduces itself not as an escape from the world, but a deeper entry into it. Liana Warren, the Oakland-based singer-songwriter with a guitar like a whispering river and a voice that shifts between porcelain clarity and dusk-hued grit, invites us into her apartment, into her memories, into her questions. This is a document of noticing. Of sitting still long enough to watch the light change on your walls. And in the 10 tracks that follow, Warren tells us stories and hands them over gently, like a favourite sweater, still warm.

“Twin Peaks” follows like a bloom, rich with Omnichord shimmer and wide-eyed gratitude. This is a song for anyone who’s fallen in love with a city because someone they loved lived in it. Warren’s intricate fingerpicking loops like breath beneath a song that seems to float several inches above the ground. “I built my dreams between these streets,” she sings, and you believe her. There’s a kind of sacred geometry in the way she draws lines between geography and intimacy—the street names are personal, the sunsets are emotional weather. It’s a San Francisco hymn, but it’s also your own if you’ve ever tried to map your heart onto a city skyline.

The emotional current deepens in “Atoms Colliding,” a track that feels like it’s being broadcast from inside a moment of cosmic surrender. The instrumentation expands—celestial synths, a pulse like slow breathing—yet Warren never loses the clarity of her voice. Here, she stares into the uncertainty of the universe and doesn’t flinch. “What if it all just keeps expanding?” she wonders, not with dread, but with awe. It’s a rare thing to hear a song confront insignificance and still make you feel seen. Like all great existential songwriting, it’s less about answers than the courage to ask the question.

“Cleo’s Bath” and “The Apple Tree” are the emotional keystones of the record—grief songs, but tenderly so. Warren’s voice turns softer here, like she's singing directly to those she's lost: her grandmother in one, her childhood dogs in the other. These songs carry the weight of memory without ever becoming burdened by it. In “Cleo’s Bath,” ambient textures drift like half-remembered dreams, while “The Apple Tree” roots itself in acoustic simplicity. The effect is devastating and beautiful. She doesn’t mine sorrow for drama, but renders it with the respect of someone carefully folding old letters, still fragrant with love.

The album’s midpoint offers a turn inward. “Patterns” is spacious and hypnotic, its chord progression circling like a thought you can’t shake. “I do the same thing every day / waiting for something to change,” she sings, and it lands with quiet devastation. But then comes “Swimming Song,” which breaks the surface like a gasp of fresh air. It’s a song about surrendering to the current of change, delivered in a lilting rhythm that mimics the unpredictable motion of water. Warren’s voice dances here, light as river foam, and there’s a hopeful looseness to the arrangement—a promise that stasis doesn’t last forever.

“Paulina” glimmers with romantic nostalgia, set against the backdrop of Mexico City. The melodies are flirtatious, sun-drenched, tinged with sadness, like a postcard written but never sent. “If it’s not forever, then what is it all for?” she asks, and the question doesn’t beg for resolution. Instead, Warren leans into the ephemerality, letting love’s impermanence become part of its beauty. Her songwriting here recalls Judee Sill and early Joni Mitchell in melodic complexity and emotional layering. This is folk music that’s not afraid of sophistication. Or seduction.

Then, “Hearts & Minds.” This track feels like a curtain call—cinematic, slow-building, and reflective. The instrumentation grows gradually: strings, piano, harmonies like light through stained glass. The lyrics thread together the album’s recurring themes—love, memory, change—with the clarity of someone who’s watched a storm pass and is finally letting the air back in. It’s the kind of song that makes you stop whatever you’re doing and listen. Warren doesn’t end the album with a climax but a reckoning. One final look back before the lights go out.

But not quite. 'For Now, Forever closes' with “Adaline,” a hushed love song to a best friend. It’s a lullaby, a benediction, a whispered reminder that even as everything changes, some things tether us. The final notes hang in the air like the scent of wildflowers after rain—faint, sweet, unmistakably real. Warren doesn’t promise forever, and she doesn’t need to. She gives us something even more valuable: the fleeting, luminous now. This album may mark her debut under her full name, but it’s clear Liana Warren has arrived—for now, yes, but with a voice and vision that feel like they’ll echo far beyond it.

For more information, follow Liana Warren on Spotify, Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

Liana Warren