Brooklyn singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy is returning with her highly anticipated new album Devotion, due out March 27 on ATO Records. Devotion is Glaspy’s first full-length since her acclaimed debut 2016 Emotions and Math and marks an entirely new sonic chapter for her.
Glaspy has built a reputation as a skilled guitarist, and Emotions and Math was notable for its swaggering electric guitar sounds; on Devotion she shifted gears and built songs with completely different instrumentation as their base. The results – co-produced with Los Angeles’ Tyler Chester – are rich, sweeping, and melodic, a fittingly enchanting sound for a collection of 12 love songs. “It’s about letting love in even when you don’t know what will happen when you do,” says Glaspy. “It’s about devoting your heart to someone or something, against all odds.”
Today she shares Devotion‘s first single “Killing What Keeps Us Alive” and its gorgeous video, shot by Alex Chaloff, alongside a run of UK tour dates for March 2020 (see below).
Watch/listen to “Killing What Keeps Us Alive” below:
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. 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 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.”
Devotion artwork & tracklisting:
1. Killing What Keeps Us Alive
2. Without Him
3. Young Love
4. You’ve Got My Number
5. Stay With Me
6. So Wrong It’s Right
7. Heartbreak
8. You Amaze Me
9. Devotion
10. Vicious
11. What’s The Point
12. Consequences
Live dates:
27th March – Mono, Glasgow
28th March – Institute, Manchester
29th March – Fleece, Bristol
31st March – Lafayette, London