Margaret Glaspy

• If & When [Storysound, 2013] *
• Emotions and Math [ATO, 2016] A-
• Echo the Diamond [ATO, 2023] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

If & When [Storysound, 2013]
In 2013 still a work in progress, especially as regards her low end ("Cynthia," "You're Smiling [But I Don't Believe You") *

Emotions and Math [ATO, 2016]
The title song is about what it says it's about--"Counting the days till you're back," to be precise. But it also announces Glaspy's aesthetic strategy. Nominally she's a singer-songwriter, applying a voice labeled both lilting and gravelly but that I'd just peg as adult to songs that always make room for feelings we needn't assume are always hers. But she's even more striking as a guitarist, running a thick, rockish sound through a harmonic palette that suits both a Berklee dropout who audited master classes after she couldn't afford tuition and a Texan who got hip to passing chords playing backup fiddle with her musical family. Although her music is cleaner and clearer, she sounds like Speedy Ortiz's Sadie Dupuis if she sounds like anybody. But with Glaspy you have a clearer bead on whatever love the song is about--just not whether it's hers. A-

Echo the Diamond [ATO, 2023]
A calm, declarative California-to-NYC singer-songwriter who kept auditing guitar classes after her Berklee grant ran out is determined not to give up on this love thing either. "Between a rock and a hard place/I'll be your lily pad," she vows, and if you personally are the beneficiary of that promise don't let the chance pass. There's sweetness here, but also thought and the kind of intelligence that values the lubricious without getting swamped by it. Thirty-five she may be; jaded she's not. A-