Duality as a Creative Weapon: What ‘I Am Both’ Is Really About
Margaret Glaspy’s album I Am Both is a stripped-back singer-songwriter acoustic record that rejects digital distraction and production excess in favor of live, essential songwriting, foregrounding her multidimensional identity and intimate storytelling as both an artist and a person. This Margaret Glaspy album opens with its thesis in the title itself: she refuses to be either/or. On the self-possessed title cut, she pushes back against pressure to tidy herself into a single category, insisting on her right to contain multitudes. The phrase “I Am Both” is not branding; it is a creative weapon. By naming her duality, Glaspy gives herself permission to be inward-looking and outward-looking, fiercely self-critical yet tenderly observant. In an era of excess and endless distraction, she turns away from the noise toward something far more essential: songs that hold emotional contradictions without resolving them, and a sound that allows those contradictions to be heard without clutter.
Stripped Sound, Stripped Process: Rejecting Excess by Design
The core argument of I Am Both is not only in its lyrics but in how it was made. Produced by Joe Henry, the followup to Echo the Diamond is “certainly a more acoustic affair than its predecessor,” recorded live over three days at Reservoir Studios with drummer Jay Bellerose, keyboardist Patrick Warren, and bassist Ross Gallagher. That speed and minimalism are a statement: Glaspy wants to capture moments, not sculpt them into oblivion. She thinks of herself as “more of a photographer than a sculptor in the studio,” chasing first takes instead of layered perfection. More radical, though, is the way she stripped her process of digital interference. Breaking her social media habit allowed her to “get back to original thought instead of being under the influence of so many outside opinions,” an experience she calls “life-changing.” In other words, this I Am Both review has to treat the absence of noise—online and in the mix—as Glaspy’s most aggressive artistic choice.
Track-by-Track: Small Stories, Deliberate Choices
Glaspy’s own track-by-track notes reveal how intentional the apparent simplicity of these songs really is. “Michigan” began on a tour bus, sparked by fresh memories of northern landscapes and a fantasy of fleeing city intensity after a brutal breakup. “That Rose,” inspired by The Band, “wrote itself once I got it going,” turning jealousy into sweet surrealism as clouds blush like a lover’s eyes. “Common Ground” became “the song that taught me how to play the harmonica,” its Dylanesque wit aimed at our habit of putting people on pedestals or dismissing them instead of seeing their humanity. Even “Petty,” written long ago, finds its home here, suggesting Glaspy saved it for a record where small, unflattering feelings could be held without adornment. These anecdotes are not trivia; they show a songwriter following her own internal logic while resisting the temptation to over-explain, letting impression trump exposition.
‘Reminder’ and the Ethics of Showing Up
If there is a moral center to I Am Both, it lives inside “Reminder.” The song is a slow-building, softly powerful meditation on Glaspy’s smallness against the scale of others’ suffering, an attempt to hold personal doubt and global crisis in the same frame. She admits she “didn’t think much of this song until I did,” a confession that mirrors the track’s theme: value often reveals itself quietly, over time. In one of the album’s clearest self-addresses, she calls it “a message to myself for when it feels like I’m doing nothing of value, reminding me that it’s important to keep showing up in lots of little ways instead of giving up altogether.” That line is the album’s ethic in plain language. Glaspy is suspicious of neat, symmetrical narratives; she says “Reminder” is something she “never would’ve written if I were still praying to the gods who told me everything needs to be neat and tidy and symmetrical.” Refusing tidy answers is her way of taking responsibility without pretending the world is manageable.
An Introspective Tradition, Reimagined as Public Service
I Am Both positions Glaspy squarely within the singer-songwriter acoustic tradition of introspection, but she treats that tradition as a public service rather than a career ladder. Her lyrics, written longhand and refined on a typewriter, move between fictional vignettes, unguarded self-revelation, and empathetic observation of a “troubled world,” from the acerbic “Common Ground” to the outward-looking “Martin Luther King Jr.,” which reframes a 1957 sermon for crises like the U.S. housing emergency. Her folk-leaning indie-rock, powered by disarmingly direct vocals and eloquent guitar work, serves listeners who crave emotional clarity over sonic spectacle. She has said that where many industries measure success by climbing as high as possible, she now thinks of music as “something more like a public service”: showing up in city after city, bringing songs to whoever needs them. That is the quiet radicalism of this new album release—stripping away distraction so that complexity, service, and small acts of showing up can take center stage.
