A Singer-Songwriter Album That Refuses to Shout to Be Heard
Margaret Glaspy’s album I Am Both is a stripped-back singer-songwriter record that rejects excess production and distraction in favor of essential songwriting, intimate performances, and a deliberate balance of intellect and emotion that rewards close, repeat listening.
While many new album releases scramble for attention with maximalist production, the latest Margaret Glaspy album moves in the opposite direction. I Am Both was recorded live over three days at New York City’s Reservoir Studios with drummer Jay Bellerose, keyboardist Patrick Warren, and bassist Ross Gallagher, and produced by Joe Henry, a three-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and producer. The setup is simple; the impact is not. Calling the record “stripped back” describes both its sound and the process that made it, which involved Glaspy stepping away from social media to regain what she describes as “original thought” free from outside opinions. This refusal to participate in the volume war is not nostalgic restraint; it is a pointed statement about what music is for.
Intellect and Feeling, Refined into Essential Songwriting
I Am Both strengthens what may be Glaspy’s defining quality: her refusal to pull intellect and feeling apart. According to one review, “with this fourth album, Margaret Glaspy confirms that her greatest strength lies in her refusal to separate intellect from feeling.” That is not a vague compliment; you can hear it in the way the lyrics question themselves even as the melodies invite you in. Glaspy wrote these songs after cutting off the “addiction to social media,” rediscovering the clarity that comes from thinking in longhand and revising on a typewriter. The result is an album that sounds unadorned but never undercooked. Every chord change, line, and melodic contour feels carefully chosen, yet none of it comes across as academic or overworked. In a landscape crowded with content, this kind of disciplined economy is an act of resistance.
Produced again by Joe Henry, whose work with artists like Aimee Mann and Joan Baez proves he understands singer-songwriter albums that prioritize intimacy over spectacle, I Am Both leans into an understated elegance. The band plays with patience, leaving air around Glaspy’s eloquent guitar and disarmingly direct vocals. The record is rich in memorable melodies and incisive writing, but its lasting impact comes from what one critic describes as its “generosity of perspective.” Glaspy explores identity, memory, affection, and social conscience without forcing tidy conclusions, preferring nuance over hot takes. In doing so, she argues that thoughtfulness is not the enemy of feeling; it is the path to deeper, more lasting emotion.
Track by Track: How I Am Both Builds a Cohesive World
I Am Both is not a random collection of songs; it is a carefully constructed set that builds a coherent world. Glaspy even offered a track-by-track breakdown of the album, underlining how deliberate the sequencing and themes are. Opener “Michigan” stretches past five minutes yet never feels indulgent. Written first on a tour bus with northern landscapes in mind, it turns geography into emotional terrain, introducing the record’s preoccupation with people suspended between memory and movement. The playing is restrained and conversational, allowing observations to accumulate instead of resolving into easy declarations. It is a quiet thesis statement: this is an album more interested in how feelings evolve than in how they explode.
From there, “Reminder” pulls the lens inward, treating recollection as an active negotiation with the present rather than a warm bath of nostalgia. “That Rose,” inspired by The Band, shows Glaspy’s skill at turning ordinary images into multi-layered narratives once the song “got it going” and almost wrote itself. “I Thought She Was a Song” blurs the line between person and art, probing what happens when we turn people into symbols that fit our emotional needs. Across the 11 tracks, Glaspy moves from fictional vignettes to unguarded self-revelation and empathetic observation of a troubled world, all while returning to the album’s core idea: that contradiction, uncertainty, and duality are not problems to be solved but realities to be acknowledged.
The Title Track and the Ethics of Complexity
The title track “I Am Both” crystallizes the album’s philosophy. Glaspy wrote it around a female character she admires, a woman who “contains multitudes while seeing reality very clearly.” The song is an explicit refusal to be flattened into a single role, genre, or mood. Glaspy admits that it can feel safer to fit herself into a category, but concludes that embracing her own complexity is healthier. That confession is not performative branding; it aligns with the entire record’s embrace of contradiction. One review notes that I Am Both explores duality and coexistence rather than definitive answers, and that Glaspy’s confidence lies in her willingness to examine opposing impulses without forcing them into neat resolutions. In an era where artists are nudged toward simple narratives, this insistence on complexity feels quietly radical.
The production supports that ethic. Henry records Glaspy like a photographer rather than a sculptor, capturing live takes instead of layering them endlessly. The musicians respond with discipline, stepping forward only when needed and otherwise giving the lyrics room to resonate. Songs like “Petty” confront less flattering human traits—small resentments, insecurities—without moralizing or self-flagellation. That refusal to flatten either herself or her subjects into heroes and villains reflects the album’s title in practice. Glaspy is both compassionate and unsparing, personal and socially aware, thoughtful and visceral. That is the point: she insists that a singer-songwriter album can engage with the mess of modern life without sacrificing melody or emotional pull.
Why I Am Both Matters in an Age of Excess
I Am Both belongs to a long line of singer-songwriter albums that value songcraft over spectacle, but it feels less like a retro throwback and more like a needed correction. New York singer-songwriter Margaret Glaspy set out “to walk the walk” of her own idea of what a songwriter should be, and she did so by stepping away from the noise, reclaiming focus, and then recording a more acoustic, live-in-the-room follow-up to Echo the Diamond. The album is rich in memorable melodies, incisive lyricism, and beautifully judged performances, yet it never announces its own importance. Instead, it trusts listeners to meet it halfway, to sit with nuance instead of chasing the next notification.
Glaspy has described music less as a ladder to climb and more as a kind of public service: you show up, city after city, and bring the songs to whoever needs them. That attitude saturates I Am Both. It recognizes that people are not singular narratives but bundles of competing impulses and evolving identities, and it treats that complexity with respect. In doing so, the album proves that singer-songwriters still matter in an age of excess, not as nostalgia acts but as artists capable of providing the kind of focused, generous attention that our distracted culture keeps telling us we no longer have time for.
