FEATURE: Spotlight: Margaret Glaspy

FEATURE:

Spotlight

Margaret Glaspy

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MANY people might not be aware…

of Margaret Glaspy and her music, but she is an artist that you definitely need in your life. Glaspy is based in New York, but she was born in Sacramento (in 1989) and grew up in California. As an artist, Glaspy was curious from a young age, where she learned the fiddle, guitar and trombone – she decided to focus on the guitar from the age of sixteen. Glaspy’s first L.P., 2016’s Emotions and Math, was released to acclaim, and she released Devotion, her latest album, very recently. Glaspy has released E.P.s and been busy through most of her career, but I think Devotion is the album that has introduced her music to many people who, until now, might have been unaware. I will come to that album in a minute, but I want to bring in an interview from 2015 where Glaspy spoke with Interview Magazine. There was a lot of anticipation around her music and, in the interview, Glaspy spoke about her early years and moving to New York; she spoke to the nature of the songs on Emotions and Math:

“After attending the Berklee College of Music for one semester before dropping out, Glaspy spent time in Boston working and performing. In September 2010 she made the inevitable move to New York. “Since I was a tiny girl I knew I was going to live in New York,” she says. “It was a dream of mine. Living in Boston, it was so close. It just felt like, ‘Why not take the opportunity?'” After six years in the city spent babysitting and, at times performing two shows a week, she planned to release Emotions and Math via Bandcamp, but luckily, ATO Records picked up on her music and released the LP last month.

When we’d be around the campfire my family would all play together. We were a camping family when I was young. At home—I see it now as such a special environment—someone would be on the couch playing the guitar and someone else would pick one up and start strumming along. That was the vibe in the house.

I would argue [the songs are] not autobiographical or from my diary, only because I approach the whole songwriting process pretty objectively. I think that it’s really fun to hear people’s perspectives on the songs because often they’re argued as being straight from my life. A lot of them are kind of character studies or taking something I’ve seen a thousand times, honing in on it, and capturing it in a certain way”.

I have only recently discovered the music of Margaret Glaspy, but I have listened back to her older work and sort of caught up. I adore her voice and lyrical style; there is a rawness in her voice that is emphatic, whiskey-soaked and filled with emotion. Tracks such as You and I (from Emotions and Math) are full of kick and memorability. Glaspy, on her latest album, is more experimental and far-reaching, but she has retained so much of her sound. The best way to get a sense of who Glaspy is is to listen to her music. Devotion is a terrific album that I have been listening to for a few weeks now.

She spoke with Billboard about the artists that inspired her album, and the nature of her hugely accomplished voice came up:

“Devotion doesn’t dwell on the world going up in flames so much as forging something beautiful -- and foreign -- from that fire. On 2016’s Emotions and Math, Glaspy, firmly rooted in the indie intersection of rock and folk, clutched a guitar and established herself as a talent to watch following her years at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and two self-released EPs. She toured in support of Emotions and Math for three years, and returning home to New York offered an opportunity to recalibrate and switch up her palette in the process.

Devotion is as experimental as it is classic, in that it builds on Glaspy’s desire to expand her multi-instrumentalist skill set and her lyrical profundity. From the shimmery major chords and unabashedly adoring choruses of “Without Him” and “Young Love” to the metallic clashes of “You’ve Got My Number” and the dizzying breakdown of “Consequences,” Devotion is a study in contrasts and cohesion: each song sounds further afield from Emotions and Math, yet every verse fortifies Glaspy’s voice and the vulnerability she chooses to embrace in life, love and a world gone mad.

Did any artist or outside inspiration leave a particularly strong imprint on Devotion?

I’d always been hip to Alexander McQueen, the designer, and I think that one thing that really pushed me was learning more about his life and his lineage. I started to watch a lot of his runway shows and got really into his clothing, his art, what he did in his lifetime. That inspired Devotion and made me want to shift directions a lot. I wanted to make music that was inspired by his clothing, and also wanted to make music that made sense of the clothes that he made, that you could wear them or even just look at them, and the music would make sense on some level. ... He had a sense of being able to mix a lot of unexpected mediums, and also had a real eye for the future. Sometimes the things that he was making felt like science fiction.

Of course, the things that I’m making, everything is very derivative of something I’ve heard, and you can’t help it -- that’s kind of the joy of music in a way, that you’re just going to be kind of recycling bits that you’ve got at some point. He inspired me to want to reach past what I’ve used before and try and make the things I was hearing instead of just recycling all the things I’ve used in the past. So, yeah -- a lot of different angles in the way I was inspired by his aesthetic. He was also just a brilliant, brilliant man who was a transcendent artist, for sure, that made me want to just do my best.

Your voice is crystal clear, and a potent messenger, throughout Devotion:It’s romantic and loving in some songs, but downright devastating in others. Which songs best demonstrate the challenges you set for yourself with Devotion?

I think one of the biggest songs that was an orienter for the record was probably “Killing What Keeps Us Alive.” The demo feels very much so like the record version -- synthesized vocals, and also, I had written a short story that was the inspiration for that song. All of a sudden it put me on the map, in my brain, of what the record was about. That was a song that I think challenged me to make a lot of different elements, production-wise, lyrically, be vulnerable, and also at the same time kind of command the experience.

When you start to work in a different medium or in ways that you haven’t, you’re vulnerable anyway, because you’re kind of off your game -- I’m not just playing the guitar the whole time or trying to construct music the way I have been. I felt a little bit like, “Whoa, I’m making myself vulnerable, consciously.”

In that process of making that song, I felt like I was doing things that I hadn’t done before and I had to power through it and make some decisions in order to get to that spot. When I did, that was the first time that I had felt proud of it: I had written a lot of s---ty songs before that, that poked at it, and that was the first success of me finding a sonic and lyrical footprint that made sense together all in one fell swoop”.

It is amazing to think about what Glaspy has mixed into her music since Emotions and Math. Her confidence has grown and, whilst many great artists expand and diversify as their careers go on, I think Glaspy has made some big steps on Devotion. I have seen some reviews that were a little underwhelming; some sources that were not as blown away by Devotion as they were with Emotions and Math. I think Devotion is an album you need to spend some time with and let it sink in. In their review, Rolling Stone had this to say:

“Margaret Glaspy’s second album begins with a brief jolt of vocoder that recalls the statement-making opening to “Oh, What a World,” a highlight from Kacey Musgraves’ 2018 album Golden Hour. Musgraves’ synth-country blockbuster provided a template for how roots-based songwriters can strive for modern pop ambition without sacrificing songcraft.

Devotion, the latest from New York singer-songwriter Glaspy, is one of the most fully-formed efforts to come out in the wake of Golden Hour. Glaspy doesn’t tear down so much expand and build upon the warm Seventies folk-rock of her wonderful 2016 debut Emotions + Math, incorporating drum loops and processed vocals into an effortless mix of swooping indie-pop (“Without Him”), industrial noise (“What’s the Point”) and Ben Folds-piano sing-alongs (“Vicious”).

“Anybody with a pulse, or even half a heart, has a reason to be foaming at the mouth,” Glaspy sings on “Angry Again, a forceful Fifties-style torch ballad about being paralyzed by one’s emotions (in this case, outrage). That raw track feels like an aberration from Glaspy, who usually writes with uncommon emotional dexterity and precision. When Glaspy asks, “who’s the clown, and who’s the savior?” on the bouncy “Stay With Me,” the song’s refrain pokes fun at the idea that any such categorization could ever be so black and white: “Me/You/Me/You/Me/You”.

If you have not heard of Margret Glaspy, I would recommend you check her out and go and follow her on social media. Devotion is her latest statement, and I am sure we will see a lot more music from her in the coming years. Glaspy’s latest album is a stunning work that boasts…