Margaret Glaspy’s New Album ‘Devotion’ Out Today
Performing on CBS This Morning: Saturday Sessions Tomorrow, March 28
“Margaret Glaspy has evolved. Devotion… sways with the confidence of knowing that whichever decision you make is the right one, no matter what.” – MTV
“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.” – BILLBOARD
“Margaret Glaspy’s songs are deeply personal, often peppered with humor and heartache.” – NPR MUSIC
“Margaret Glaspy stun[s] us with her commanding guitar work and penchant for amorous songwriting.” – STEREOGUM
“Building on a well-received debut, and taking a bold step in a new direction… It’s an impressive feat that Glaspy manages to do both at once.” – PASTE
“Over the course of 12 songs, Glaspy takes listeners through the full spectrum of heart-centric matter, from in-love to lovelorn, and it’s all connected through consistently excellent vocal work and a bold sonic landscape.” – NO DEPRESSION
“Twelve love songs that unflinchingly delve into the tender heart and dark underbelly of relationships, commitment, and romance.” – UPROXX
“Under all the new technique… is the same powerful singer-songwriter who won fans over in the first place.” – CONSEQUENCE OF SOUND
Margaret Glaspy is thrilled to celebrate the release of her sophomore album Devotion, out today. Praised as “starkly beautiful” (Rolling Stone) and an “exhilarating departure from her previous work” (American Songwriter), Devotion finds the New York singer/songwriter daringly exploring new sonic textures while still showcasing the incredible guitar skills and candid songwriting that first endeared her to fans and critics. “The biggest centerpiece for the record is a sense of vulnerability and earnestness,” Glaspy recently told Uproxx in an interview. “My little corner that I found was most interesting was being vulnerable, where you can just say how you feel and not create boundaries around it.”
Today Margaret also shares a new live video of her performing her plaintive single “Stay With Me” at Atomic Studios in Brooklyn’s Red Hook — the same studio where the album was recorded — alongside keyboardist Eric Lane and drummer Tim Kuhl. Watch “Stay With Me (Live)” below and don’t miss the previously released live version of “Devotion” and the official music video for “Killing What Keeps Us Alive.”
Don’t miss Margaret Glaspy performing “Killing What Keeps Us Alive,” “Stay With Me,” and “Devotion” on CBS This Morning: Saturday Sessionstomorrow, March 28 at 7-9am ET. Margaret and her band worked with the CBS crew to record a socially distanced session at The Bridge Studio inBrooklyn.
MORE ON DEVOTION:
On Margaret Glaspy’s long-awaited second album, Devotion, this highly acclaimed young artist reaffirms her status as one of the most sharp-eyed singer-songwriters of her generation while managing to fearlessly reinvent her sound. The results are as exhilarating and defy expectations.
Coming home after nearly three years on the road in support of her 2016 debut album Emotions and Math and the 2018 follow-up EP Born Yesterday, Glaspywas eager to challenge herself as an artist and start to make a new album with a clean aesthetic slate. Her bold experimentation has paid off, with tunes that are her most melodically confident, rhythmically compelling, and often incredibly romantic. The arrangements are unexpectedly lush at times, especially on the torchy “Heartbreak,” and often boast an impressive groove, on such tracks as “You’ve Got My Number” and the title song, “Devotion.” Glaspy announces her radical approach at the very start of Devotion, where digitally altered voices serve as the prelude to “Killing What Keeps Us Alive,” and she fills the album with surprising sonic touches, right up to the haunting electronics-and-voice soundscape of album closer “Consequence.”
On Devotion, Glaspy has not only transformed but evolved. The distinctive personality that marked Emotions and Math is still very much in evidence here. On her debut, Glaspy could be bracingly direct as she chronicled the trials of being alone or the tribulations of being together. She brought swagger, as well as sensitivity, to her lyrics and her performances. On Devotion, she still does, but her perspective has changed: “This record is very different from the last. It’s not about being righteous or all-knowing, it’s about letting love in even when you don’t know what will happen when you do. It’s about devoting your heart to someone or something, against all odds.“
Glaspy toured throughout the USA, Europe, China and Australia behind Emotions & Math including dates with Wilco and The Lumineers among others – she also appeared on NPR’s Tiny Desk, CBS Saturday Morning and Late Night With Conan O’Brien. Finding herself in her Brooklyn apartment after all of her travels, Glaspy admits, “It was such a shift for me that I didn’t know what to do with myself when I closed that chapter. I was feeling pretty shy. I like to be alone and I had constantly been around people for two or three years straight. I took a long breath, reorienting myself, trying to find my in to get inspired and to get excited about making records again.”
Glaspy enlisted L.A.-based producer and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Chester, who has collaborated with Blake Mills and Jackson Browne among many others, to produce Devotion – recorded at Atomic Sound in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where they recorded the bulk of Devotion. “Tyler and I proved to be a very good match in the studio. I love being very hands-on with my records and he was a force of nature without restricting my sense of what the record should be. His instincts and ability are truly inspiring.” They brought in Glaspy’s touring drummer Tim Kuhl to complete the picture with his brilliantly artful and austere sense of the kit paired with Chester’s programming. Brooklyn based engineer, Mark Goodell captured these performances masterfully and James Krausse (Los Angeles) mixed Devotion in a way that Margaret says “she has always envisioned her music sounding like.”
“It has been amazing to be able to stretch out, to not define myself just by the music I make, but to follow my nose toward all the things that make me happy.” A good example being Glaspy enlisting herself in distance education through Harvard University to fulfill her dream of getting an education outside of music. “Embracing being a student has made me feel like a child again and I think that has helped to propel my music forward so much more. My brain feels happy.”
Devotion, then, is like a series of hard-earned life lessons. Glaspy’s evolution over the last few years has been both musical and personal, which makes the album that much more compelling: “I’m learning that life is painful but you take the bad with the good; that love is hard but if you love someone, you make yourself available; that life is short and it’s okay to be sincere. I’m starting to be able to write about these things and it’s a feat for myself as an artist and growth for me as a person.”
