Margaret Glaspy has announced the August 18 release of her new album, Echo The Diamond, via ATO. Today she shares the first taste of the album via the LP’s exultant opening track ‘Act Natural.’
‘Act Natural’ captures the strange thrill of infatuation, channelling wonder and wide-eyed bewilderment into her lyrics from the first verse (“Are you a paradise bird?/’Cause violet shines bright in both your eyes/That can’t be natural”). “‘Act Natural’ is about trying to play it cool when you meet someone remarkable,” shares Glaspy. “I wrote it in the afternoon in the back of a tour bus and the riff came separately when I got home. It is one of my favourite songs on the record to play live.” The video for the track, directed by Phineas Alexander, is a deep dive into Glaspy’s artistic New York City community and a showcase of her love for the guitar.
Echo The Diamond is the third full-length from Margaret Glaspy. It was produced by Glaspy with co-production from her partner, guitarist/composer Julian Lage and is the follow-up to 2020’s Devotion. Echo The Diamond takes its title from a turn of phrase that Glaspy tossed off in the midst of a conversation with Lage. “Bruce Lee once said to be water—if water is in a teacup, it becomes teacup-shaped; if it’s in a glass, then it takes the shape of that glass,” she recalls. “For me, Echo The Diamond is a way of saying ‘shine bright’, ‘be brilliant.’” The album expands on the frenetic vitality of her widely acclaimed debut Emotions and Math—a 2016 release The New Yorker hailed as an album “in which pretty songs often turn prickly, enriched by carefully measured infusions of dissonance and grit.” This time around, Glaspy worked with drummer/percussionist David King of The Bad Plus and bassist Chris Morrissey (Andrew Bird, Lucius, Ben Kweller), recording at Reservoir Studios in Manhattan and embracing an intentionally unfussy process that left plenty of room for spontaneity. “I love music with a big element of risk to it, which was really the heartbeat of this album,” she says. “A lot of what you hear are the very first takes.” Anchored in the raw yet mesmerizing vocal presence and impressionistic guitar work she’s brought to the stage in touring with the likes of Spoon and Wilco, Echo The Diamond holds entirely true to the spirit of its lyrical explorations, presenting a selection of songs both unvarnished and revelatory.
Echo The Diamond:
- Act Natural
- Get Back
- Female Brain
- Irish Goodbye
- I Didn’t Think So
- Memories
- Turn The Engine
- Hammer And The Nail
- My Eyes
- People Who Talk
