Margaret Glaspy Shares New Single 'Memories'

Margaret Glaspy recently announced the August 18 release of her new album, Echo The Diamond, via ATO. Today she shares a new single off the LP, “Memories.” The track finds Glaspy examining the emotional ruin so easily wrought by our own grieving minds.

“‘Memories’ was probably the most challenging song for me to track; the take you hear is the only one I was able to get through completely,” she says. “It was a level of vulnerability I’d never gotten on record, and it holds a special place in my heart now. Even though it’s about a very specific loss for me, it seems to ricochet in different ways for anyone who hears it.”

Glaspy previously revealed the LP’s exultant opening track “Act Natural” which saw support from Pitchfork, Stereogum, Spin, Brooklyn Vegan, Under The Radar, and more. Pre-order Echo The Diamond here. 

On August 18 Glaspy will celebrate the release of Echo The Diamond with a performance and album signing at New York City’s Rough Trade record Store located at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The festivities kick-off at 6pm. On September 12 she will head to the UK for her first tour in support of the album. Glaspy and her band return stateside for a North American tour that starts September 28 in Washington, DC at Union Stage.

The tour concludes at the Lodge Room in Los Angeles on November 14. Along the way she will make stops in, among other markets, Toronto, ON on October 2, Chicago on October 7 and Seattle, on November 9. Margaret will play a hometown show at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom on October 20. All tour dates are listed below and tickets are on-sale here.  

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.

Originally from the Northern California town of Red Bluff, Glaspy first started writing songs at age 15 and soon began honing the potent balance of sensitivity and incisiveness that now imbues her music. In bringing Echo The Diamond to life, she adhered to a songwriting process meant to preserve and amplify her unfettered expression (“If I sit down with a guitar for about 15 minutes, I usually have a song at the end,” she notes).

Along with drawing from an eclectic mix of inspirations—Sonic Youth, Vivienne Westwood’s punk-influenced approach to fashion, Tom Waits’s music and turn as a jailbird DJ in Jim Jarmusch’s Down By Law, the 1985 Japanese Western film Tampopo—Glaspy sustained that sense of thoughtful urgency upon joining forces with King and Morrissey in the studio. “This is the most fluid and immediate music I have ever made,” she says. “I see now that I protected the creative space by surrounding myself with incredible people in making this record, and I’m so happy I did.”

As a result of Glaspy’s rigor in protecting her instincts, Echo The Diamond ultimately marks the glorious realization of her most closely held intentions for the album. “I’m excited to make music that doesn’t try to manipulate the listener into wishing for things to be any different from what they are. Ideally, I want my songs to reveal life for what it is, and to show that it’s that way for everyone.”

Margaret Glaspy tour dates

8/18 - Rough Trade record Store - New York, NY (performance and album signing)

9/12 - Chalk - Brighton, UK *

9/13 - O2 Forum Kentish Town - London, UK *

9/14 - SWX - Bristol, UK *

9/16 - Albert Hall - Manchester, UK *

9/17 - SWG3 - Glasgow, UK *

9/18 - Brudenell Social Club - Leeds, UK *

9/20 - Omeara - London, UK 

9/28 - Union Stage - Washington, DC

9/29 - Underground Arts - Philadelphia, PA

9/30 - The Sinclair - Boston, MA

10/2 - Horseshoe - Toronto, ON

10/3 - Grog Shop - Cleveland, OH

10/4 - El Club - Detroit, MI

10/6 - Fine Line - Minneapolis, MN

10/7 - Sleeping Village - Chicago, IL

10/8 - The Back Room @ Colectivo - Milwaukee, WI

10/10 - Blue Room @ Third Man Records - Nashville, TN

10/11 - Center Stage - Vinyl - Atlanta, GA

10/12 - Motorco Music Hall - Durham, NC

10/13 - Grey Eagle - Asheville, NC

10/14 - Richmond Music Hall - Richmond, VA

10/20 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY

11/1 - Antone’s - Austin, TX

11/2 - Deep Ellum Art Co - Dallas, TX

11/4 - Ophelia's - Denver, CO

11/6 - Urban Lounge - Salt Lake City, UT

11/7 - The Olympic - Boise, ID

11/9 - Madame Lou's - Seattle, WA

11/10 - Biltmore Cabaret - Vancouver, BC

11/11 - Mississippi Studios - Portland, OR

11/13 - The Independent - San Francisco, CA

11/14 - Lodge Room - Los Angeles, CA

*opening for Half Moon Run

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

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